fuge question

Greenman

Greenman

Reefing newb
So I recently got a 3 gallon fuge on my tank. How often should I clean it. It has a ton of algae on the walls and a huge ball of chaeto and rubble rock. I'm assuming these things are made to turn ugly lol
 
It's not necessary to clean the walls of it (unless you want to for fun or something idk) But if you see detritus and such it would be best to siphon that out. But to be honest, I haven't cleaned my fuge in around 6 months....nor done a water change for that long either... :D
 
I don't clean mine either. It all depends on what your dt looks like. If there is no algae in it, the fuge/sump is doing its job. Keep that cheato trimmed weekly. Best thing I've seen in absorbing nitrates and phosphates.
 
DT looks amazing, First time i've ever had a Natural filter and i did my tests last night, Nitrite 0 ammonia 0 and for the first time ever in my 3 years of having my tank nitrate was 0!
 
fuge is a great food supply. cranks out tons of copodes for your main tank. if you want to keep dragonettes or secretive possum wrasses it can literally make the difference between life and death
 
I want to get a Green Mandarin but I have no pods, I'll probably order some from Reef Cleaners and give it like a month to breed like crazy so he'll have plenty to eat.
 
monique said:
fuge is a great food supply. cranks out tons of copodes for your main tank. if you want to keep dragonettes or secretive possum wrasses it can literally make the difference between life and death
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I go completely against this. Fuge are on the bottom side of a tank and needs a pump to get the water to return. There is no way live copepods can make it through a pump. Copepods will thrive in your sump, but that doesn't mean your dt will be full of them. I've said this before, stick your finger in a running pump and see what happens to your finger, same to a copepod.
 
Mine is a HOB fuge so it just drains directly into the tank. May be a little different than under the tank. But there would be no pump so they'd fall directly into the DT. Dunno if that would work with the pods or not.
 
My point was if a pump is used and don't rely on copepods in the refugium to supply 100% of the food for mandarin. This is just a hypothesis and you shouldn't have to supply them. Look under copepods when searching reef cleaners and he says the exact same.
 
Greenman said:
Mine is a HOB fuge so it just drains directly into the tank. May be a little different than under the tank. But there would be no pump so they'd fall directly into the DT. Dunno if that would work with the pods or not.
Click to expand...
thats what i have. pump puts water into the refuge and it runs through the material and drains back into the tank. i also have about 250 lbs live rock in the tank. my fuge is 24" long and there is tons of copodes in there. i have 2 dragonettes a secrative possume wrasse and a starry dragonette in my tank. they are all nice and fat. i think the fuge is what makes the difference. any time i get a chance to buy pods to put in there to reseed i do. i even have what looks like mysis shrimp breeding in there. put some rubble- from a couple different sources if if you can get it, little bit of coarse sand, some cheato,a lite for the cheato and forget about it. it will just keep cranking out copodes for your dragonette. different sources for your material in the fuge gives you a better chance at a mixed bag of pods. when i get a chance to buy a piece of live rock i usually ask for a couple handfuls of rubble-sand from the rock tank and i put it in the fuge. thats how i got mine started. give your fuge a month or so to get up and running before you start relying on it for pods. with a productive fuge and a decent amount of live rock in your tank you should be able to keep ONE dragonette happy in your tank. i would not get two. those little beggers are eatting machines. one of mine was eatting frozen when i bought it. after it got into catching live pods that was the end of that.
 
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how often do you turn your light off in the fuge. i've been keeping mine on 24/7 and my chaeto is growing like mad (not to mention a ton of other algea in the fuge.)
 
Greenman said:
how often do you turn your light off in the fuge. i've been keeping mine on 24/7 and my chaeto is growing like mad (not to mention a ton of other algea in the fuge.)
Click to expand...
my light is set up oposite to the tank. tank lights start to dim at 10pm, out at 11pm, fuge comes on at midnite, til about 6 am, tank starts to come on again around 10am. i only lite the fuge for about 5-6 hrs a nite but i have good natual lite in the room. my fuges main purpose is for podes more then anything else. i don't prune my cheato very often. still helps keep phosphate down though. if i was using it for phospate i would still run the lite a t nite but i would run them a lot longer. if you lite fuge oposite tank it also helps with ph drop at nite
 

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