Any experiences with refugiums?

There are several people on here running a planted section in their sumps. I suspect that in order to make a real difference on a 180 you will need a fairly large planted section. How were you thinking of doing it? Sectioning off a portion of your sump?

I have a 90 with a 40b sump

Half the sump is partitioned off to house cichlid fry and there is an enormous pothos vine sprawling everywhere its hard to work in the cabinet, it takes up almost the whole thing

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something like this? this was my old refugium for 240

my current sump look like a pothos forest c:

It takes alot of plants to make a negligible difference in nitrates. I'd go as large as possible with as many plants as possible. Terrestrial plants which have access to atmospheric carbondioxide do the best as they are not limited as to what's in the water column.

I have a ton of pothos, it puts a dent in nitrates. I'm getting 5ppm readings after a week of no water changes, but I don't overfeed my fish, (infact i prpbably under feed them) every single week I dispose of all of my mechanical pads and floss in my trickle tower and do fin level water changes on the display also. My substrate is clean. It's not a magic bullet, and won't cover up for a relaxed maintenance or water change schedule.

I suspect that people who claim to have 0 nitrates from planted refugiums are actually circumventing the conventional nitrogen cycle by the plants consuming ammonia before it turns to nitrates. But that's just a guess

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Sicktrick89 said:

Does anyone here have any experience with fresh water refugiums?

I love the idea of planted tanks but realize that might be far fetched with clown loaches that I plan on getting. So why not kill two birds with one stone? I was thinking of making a refugium for a 180g tank and keeping some plants, while keeping the water for my fish crystal clear.

I was just looking for any, pictures, ideas, and helpful hints when keeping a refugium.

What would be a sufficient tank size? What plants are best for water filtration? Any invertebrates? How would you set it up. etc, etc....

Thanks for the help!

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A little off topic, but IMO, there's no problem having a planted tank with clown loaches.
I have a planted 75g with 5 clowns in there. The two largest are about 5 inches.
The loaches don't uproot plants (or if they do, it's so seldom that I Don't worry about it)
Unless you have other fish in there that aren't friendly to plants, I'd try a planted tank.
If you do a refugium, you are still using electricity to make the plants grow, but you don't get to enjoy it.