Hello all. I've been reading daily for several months and finally "assembled the picture" to get my full pass. Last July I returned to the hobby after a decade long hiatus (military - finally got my own house as my wife and I approach retirement).I am currently running 3 tanks; a 65 Gallon with Silver Dollars and a school of tiger barbs, 60 Gallon mbuna tank, and a 20L planted with neons and dwarf gouramis. The 60 and 65 both run two Penguin 350s (likely to be replaced with (4) AC110s), and the 20L runs a AC70 throttled all the way down. I am thinking of building a tank-top refugium for the 65 to help with nitrates. I plan to use a piece of vinyl gutter, placed upside down behind the light bar, filled with very coarse gravel, and fed by a powerhead. Pothos will be my plant of choice....easily found locally and known to be effective at nitrate removal.Hoping this setup works well and I will do something similar on the 60 Gallon Mbuna tank.Just wondering if anyone has done anything similar? I plan to make the water flow as slow as possible, and if necessary place a wall mounted fluorescent above the tank to take care of the pothos.Water changes aren't to much of a problem...but I am currently doing 50%/week to keep the Nitrates below 40PPM, and I expect that it will become difficult once the fish are fully grown.If anyone has any experience with this, I would be very glad to hear.Danny
Tank-top refugium
- Thread starter dledinger
- Start date
Well...I didn't really know what it was called at the time, but I think I did something similar on my 300g pond. Basically used a window planter filled it with lava rocks and plants. Drilled holes across the front and had a 2500gph pond pump feed into it. Ended up looking quite nice and seemed to work tremendously!
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Gorgeous. That's definitely about what I had planned, except on top of an aquarium. Nice work. I found a good thread that had pretty much answered all my questions in another section, I think filtration.
I've always thought about a tank-top "refugium" lol...or even maybe a mini aquaponic system. Lack of space is my issue now but in the process of closing on our new house so I'm excited to try all my little "ideas "...Full (somewhat finished ) basement = awesome fish room!
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