HOB Refugium Conundrum

[felixfish]

I had bought an 8 gal hang on back refugium from this guy he had on his 125g reef tank. When i picked it up he had told me with his auto top of filling up his sump, it would cause his skimmer to overflow so he turned it off and just relied on the refugium. There is a few inch miracle mud sand bed, and it looks like 7/8" fish waste on top of that. ( You can see the fuge floor kind of in the pic)

My question is should i just syphon all that waste out, scoop all the mud out, replace with live rock or rubble, or leave it. My nitrates are up, but in the ok range. There is cheato in there, but getting small algae blooms..

 

[little_fish]

I would dump all that mud and fish poop out and either run with just the macro algae in there, or a few pieces of rubble. Disturbing that stuff could be why your nitrates are up. Plus you are suppose to replace half of the miracle mud every 6 months or so.

 

[NanoReefer]

+ lil, i have the 4 gallon hob on my 37, and i just have a 4 inch dsb cheato caulepra, and 2 lbs of rubble and the pods are takin off in there

 

[little_fish]

at 4 inches you dont have a sand bed deep enough to get the oxygen free zone. You need to either increase it to 6 inches or, IMO the better option, just remove the sand entirely.

 

[NanoReefer]

i would have went deeper, but the piece of acrylic is only 4 inches high in the fuge, so if you made it higher it would clog the pump intake

 

[little_fish]

then its probably best to remove it

 

[marcah]

I agree with little_fish.. remove the sand and run it bare.. just use the rubble and chaeto..

 

[felixfish]

Ok, I just removed all the live rock rubble and muck!!! Man what a nasty job. I shop vac'd all the rest of crap up. I attempted to wipe up the rest of the mud and whatever else was in there, also cleaned up and re-set the rock rubble. When I filled the fuge back up the water was pretty cloudy and I didn't want to push that threw the tank so going to let it settle over night. On the up and up I bought some turbo snails and my first coral a pulsing Xenia! It's already pumping it's fingers! Pics to come. Thanks for everyone's advice!