Salt Water Experts-Refuguim help/questions

[SkySouza]

Hey my fellow mfkers haha

I'm looking at picking up a 225 gal brand spanking new 5' x 3'W x 2'T acrylic tank with a cherry stand and top next week. I'm wanting to do my first real salt water reef tank. I know most the basics, however, the wifey has been wanting a seahorse tank for years and I want to run a refugium so I have some questions.


First of all I was thinkin I could set up the main tank as a beautiful display for corals and the refuguim specifically to grow micro organisms for food and house a herd of sea horses. Do you think this will work?

What size tank would you recommend for the refugium? It's going to be under the main tank, however, I'm going to manipulate the stand so the refugium will be visible and flush against the front of the stand even with the main tank. there is enough room under there for a 2'x2'x1' tall. Will that be large enough?

The tank comes with a sump as well but for aesthetics I don't want to use it for the refugium.

Should I use both the sump and refugium?

I was also wondering if the pods and such that grow in there will die when they go thro my return pump?

I would honestly prefer to just run a refugium. Is that possible?

If not should I run the sump on it's own pump and the refugium on it's own?

FLESHY: my fellow packer fan, my boi, since I know you're gonna read this would you think I could run the main tank with black sand and argonite in the sump? Would that help prevent ph shifts? Or should I just stick with argonite in the main tank as well. I know we've talked about this before and I'm asking for your honest opinion here. What would you do? I don't want to put $$$ into this use the black sand and have it cause me tons of problems.

Thanks in advance for all your opinions. I welcome them and please don't hold any questions, opinions or doubts. I'll post some pics of the tank sometime in the next week or two.

 

[nonstophoops]

Hey my fellow mfkers haha

I'm looking at picking up a 225 gal brand spanking new 5' x 3'W x 2'T acrylic tank with a cherry stand and top next week. I'm wanting to do my first real salt water reef tank. I know most the basics, however, the wifey has been wanting a seahorse tank for years and I want to run a refugium so I have some questions.


First of all I was thinkin I could set up the main tank as a beautiful display for corals and the refuguim specifically to grow micro organisms for food and house a herd of sea horses. Do you think this will work?

What size tank would you recommend for the refugium? It's going to be under the main tank, however, I'm going to manipulate the stand so the refugium will be visible and flush against the front of the stand even with the main tank. there is enough room under there for a 2'x2'x1' tall. Will that be large enough?

The tank comes with a sump as well but for aesthetics I don't want to use it for the refugium.

Should I use both the sump and refugium?

I was also wondering if the pods and such that grow in there will die when they go thro my return pump?

I would honestly prefer to just run a refugium. Is that possible?

If not should I run the sump on it's own pump and the refugium on it's own?

FLESHY: my fellow packer fan, my boi, since I know you're gonna read this would you think I could run the main tank with black sand and argonite in the sump? Would that help prevent ph shifts? Or should I just stick with argonite in the main tank as well. I know we've talked about this before and I'm asking for your honest opinion here. What would you do? I don't want to put $$$ into this use the black sand and have it cause me tons of problems.

Thanks in advance for all your opinions. I welcome them and please don't hold any questions, opinions or doubts. I'll post some pics of the tank sometime in the next week or two.

You should use as big of a refugium as you can. You should still leave space to use the sump as well. It is possible to just run a refugium, but where would you put your heaters, skimmer, etc.?

I will say that you will need to tie the sump and refugium together if you do both because it will be impossible to balance 2 pumps and overflows(one will end up dry and one flooding your house).

I am not Fleshy, but I am a big Wisco/Packer fan as well, and you could do black sand in the display if you like that look more. I like the idea of putting some argonite in the refugium. This way should not cause you any problems. The main thing would be that the sand most likely wouldn't be siphonable for cleaning.

 

[FLESHY]

I am against substrate in the sump, glad to see you in this end of the site man, better stick around.

I would try to buffer ph in other ways, like o2 supplementation.