Refugium?

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skiwez

Jack Dempsey
MFK Member
Jun 12, 2006
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Hi All,

Kinda new to the hobby, but have been doing alot of research and jsut found this forum.

A friend of mine has a saltwater aquarium, and has a refugium to use plants to help in filtration.

I'm looking to set up a cichlid tank and I don't feel that having plants in the tank will work well so I'm planning on setting up a fuge to house plants that hoipefully will help with the nitrates.

Has anyone done this does it make sense for a freshwater set-up?

Oh the tank I have is a 55 gallon currently empty, looking to set it up correctly the first time

Thanks for the help
 
please lemme know what you find out coz i would love to try it and see how it works.
 
I have done it on a somewhat large scale using stock troughs full of plants as water polishers for ponds, also a great place to raise scuds, fairy shrimp and guppies.
 
So I guess that freshwater microbes aren't as efficient at transporting nitrates and phosphates as saltwater tanks?

From the linked thread is sounds like one needs a huge fuge to get the equivalent benefit
 
A tank full of fast grownig plants andsome floaters like watter lettuce is a good way of locking up nitrates as long as you harvest out the older plants and allow for constant new growth. It also keeps the green algae growth controlled. How it compares with salt I couldn't tell you.
Two plant troughs, each @ 8'x2'x2' worked great to control nitrates and algae in an 12'x8'x2 1/2' pond that was powered by two 5700 gph pumps.
 
use floating plants because they can consume co2 right from the air and the roots suck up the nitrates make sure to provide a good light source
 
My lfs has one on their discus tank and it isnt over 10 gallons and all the fish in the tank look real good so i say you go out and buy one cause it cant hurt anything. Let me know how it turns out Aras
 
Well ... to me it seems kinda contradictory to have a refugium on a planted tank. It seems the goal of the fuge would be absorption of nitrates from the system, but the plants in your display tank do exactly that, and they need the nitrates, too.

I can imagine that it would be helpful on a monster tank with predators that cause a lot of waste, but on a planted setup I don't really see the point.
 
He is going for a non-planted cihlid tank, because the cichlids are tearing up the plants, the refugarium will be fore nitrate reduction and water polishing.
 
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