New Aquarium

[yote]

Dont use ANY METAL fittings for your plumbing.The salt will just eat the metal up causing it to get into the water.Then it becomes toxic to corals and inverts.
You'll need you use either vinyl tubing or PVC.

 

[tankedchemist]

+1 yote... saw that destroy a friend's tank. Also, as a note... brass is just an alloy of copper and tin anyway, and is fairly easily oxidized by some of the ions in saltwater, soo.... you'd get dissolved copper in your system in pretty short order. :surfing:

 

[Smitty]

Everyone here has given you some very good advise, and I would also like to welcome you to the site, glad to have you.

 

[wontonflip]

+1 to everyone here :) Just a side note about the refugium....I battled nitrates since day 1, and once i got my fuge going, i pretty much never had nitrate problems. i even got lazy one month and didn't do any water changes....but my nitrates still stayed at 0. Not to mention the HUGE pods i have growing in there now...they've grown to the size of pillbugs in the span of a month! The key to the fuge, though, is getting the right type of lighting (I use a CFL)

Good luck and keep us posted!

 

[dwinzent]

does it hurt if you have too much flow through a refugium? i am planning on building one out of an old 10g aquarium that is acrylic i was just going to run my return hose into it and have a bulkhead fitting going through the plastic to a spray bar. the only problem with it is that it is a 900gph pump and will have alot of flow. im not sure if algae can live in it.

 

[dwinzent]

also i would like to add since i am using a wet dry filter i have an empty area that is about 5g with my pump in it could i just put LR in it and have the same effects as a refugeum?

 

[daugherty]

i would not put anything in there with your pump it will just be crap to get in the way of the pump. you will get crap growing in there then it gets sucked into the pump take out all the bioballs and under the bottom plate put your rock than put all your bioballs back on top

 

[wontonflip]

My sump/fuge has 3 compartments...the intake/skimmer area, the middle is the return water area, and the 3rd is the fuge area...basically i split the intake...around 75% going into the skimmer area, and 25% going into the fuge area. Both the skimmer and fuge area overflow into the return area, then back up the tank. It's worked great so far.

But definitely avoid putting the return in a fuge area at least because over time, you'll get too much growth and it will clog your return pump.

 

[tankedchemist]

does it hurt if you have too much flow through a refugium? i am planning on building one out of an old 10g aquarium that is acrylic i was just going to run my return hose into it and have a bulkhead fitting going through the plastic to a spray bar. the only problem with it is that it is a 900gph pump and will have alot of flow. im not sure if algae can live in it.

Depends on the purpose of your Fuge, I think. I tried growing 'pods and chaeto in my fuge-- which has a pretty darn high flow, due to the nature of my tank-- and have found that pods don't reproduce all that well in really high flow environments. The chaeto-- which is what deals with your nitrates-- does very well there, though. :mrgreen:

 

[dwinzent]

Alright i put a raw shrimp in my aquarium after you guys told me to and im just starting to grow algae so how long should i wait to put in a clean up crew? also right now i have no sand or rock so if i add this will it upset my cycle?

 

[yote]

Cycling without the rock and sand is a lot like farting in a wind storm.Theres really no point.
But once the rock and sand is in,it can take anywhere from a day to 3 months to cycle.Depending on how much live rock you use and how much die-off is on the rock.

 

[dwinzent]

its not like my tank is totally empty i have some coral skeletons in there that are pretty big but will live rock need do be part of the cycle? (will i have to re-cycle when i add rock?)

 

[yote]

I didnt know you had the skeletons in there:D
As long as you just add cured rock,then you shouldnt have to worry about having another cycle.
As for your clean up crew,dont add any of them untill after the cycle is complete.Then dont add a bunch at once.Add them slow.Just enough to keep up with the algae and detritus.