Refugium
- Thread starter sctipfx4
- Start date
usinkit
Member
I use cheato in my refugium. I put a basaball size amount in and it doubled in size in a week. In that week it brought my nitrates from 20ppm to 5ppm. The second week the nitrates dropped to 0 and have remained at 0 along with phosphates. I cant say much for how long it will take for the sand to become alive because I used sand and some live rock from my main tank that was already established. HTH
masala4080
Member
A lot of people seem to use cheato macroalgea. All it needs to grow is lighting. Most people say 5 watts for every gallon of fuge but it will thrive with less. Most people leave there lights on 24/7 in the fuge, or run the opposite light cycle that the main tank it on. IMO I would get some live rock and live sand from a friends pre established tank, or your own tank if its been set up for a while. You can also but the both of them, but it might take a little longer to seed.
teresaq
Active Member
I know a site that sells nice fuge pkgs. just e-mail me
m0m24@earthlink.net
m0m24@earthlink.net
sctipfx4
New Member
ok my LFS said to use crushed coral because they have had the experiece that some of their costomers have had a deep sand bed and have taken it out because they have had a problem with algea and i have 30 watts of light on my 20L refugium. I was thinking of getting one of the small pc with 65 wats also what do you think?
masala4080
Member
also go to melevsreef .com. theres a lot of info. its an awsome site. I am actually building a acrylic fuge/sumo right now, and using that site a lot.
masala4080
Member
Dont use CC. CC holds waste and detrious matter that will get trapped and cause nitrates. while this would be kinda ok with the macro you would still have to clean the CC a lot. I would do like a 2 inch sand bed using aragonite based sand. Upping the light would be benifitial as well.
usinkit
Member
I run 85 watts on m refugium/sump which is 30 gallon. The refugium part is 10 gallons and I ran the lights 24/7 to get the cheato growing and now I have the light running opposite of the daylights.The cheato is now getting out of control and its pretty much has consumed the 10 gallon section.
usinkit
Member
The light Iam actually using is a flood light bulb purchased at home depot . Its gives out 85 watts but only uses 19 watts of power. The part# is 1P3819 and is 5100K. They sell for 10 or 12 bucks. Its worked great for 2.5 months so far and is alot cheaper then buying PC lighting. The name brand of the flood light is TPC.
