live rock vs calurpa

[nanomantis]

i am currently planning a new tank (2.5g pico) and i have limited refugium room in the back of the tank (its gonna be like 0.5 gal), i have plenty of light over the area but i need to know, what would be more beneficial a small patch of calurpa/cheato or some live sand from an established tank and some live rock rubble

 

[lion_crazz]

Well, if you are going to do live rock in the main tank, the chaeto will be much more beneficial in your refuge.

 

[nanomantis]

well it will be minimal LR because i am only going to buy coral rocks, no LR, and im just going to make my structure out of coral and the rocks they are on. A lot of the coral i will buy will be 'frags' so they will be small and have plenty of room to grow/spread over the rocks they are on.

 

[chipmaker]

The heart and soul and main filtration of a small tank like that is the live rock. In a 2.5 gal tank the cost of LR and good sand will be heads above anythng else you purchase in regards to benefical. Macro algae is not gonna take the poac eof LR by any means.....

 

[nanomantis]

but the macro works to remove the nitrates, someone please correct me if im wrong but doesnt the bacteria in the LR only convert toxic ammonia into nitrites and then into nitrates, meaning it does not activly remove the nitrates?

 

[chipmaker]

That may be true but macro algae is not really as important as proper amount of liverock in such a small tank. Actually everything is mor elimited on a small setup and since fish etc can tolerate more trate than trite I would defionatley not skimp on lr in a small tank. Without the trites and ammonia there is not gonna be any trates, so yu need live rock to be more effective in eliminating the problems.
The small amount of lr attached to frags or corals is not anywhere near enough to be sufficient overall for decent ammonia/nitrite conversion to nitrate.

 

[nanomantis]

thats a good point, whats the use of macro if there isnt enough LR to turn the nitrite into nitrate... should i put live sand on the bottem of the refugium or should i just stack up LR rubble?

 

[zman1]

Perhaps, another thought - put bio-balls or ceramic in the fuge area and do water changes to pull out NO4 on that size of tank.

 

[nanomantis]

there is going to be ceremics in one stage of the sump, right before the refugium.

 

[nanomantis]

there is going to be ceremics in one stage of the sump, right before the refugium.
this is the order its going to go in sponge-ceramics-fuge-purigan-phosguard-Polypad-ATO-pump