pumps are bad???

[GPCRalph]

Hi,

     I read that if the water from your refugium is pumped back into the tank then it defeats half of the purpose of a refugium in the sense that the pump kills most all of the copepods/amphipods.  Setting up an elevated refugium is just not really feasible right now (it would be a huge mission and look horrible.)  So should I just skimp on the refugium idea and stick with a strong skimmer?  This is not to say that if I set-up a refugium I will not use a skimmer but, what do you all think? If the water from the refugium isn't gravity fed, is it worth it? If you guys don't know, give me your opinions based on experience. Please let me know.

[Nishant3789]

Sure its worth it! but only prob is that u wont get many pods out of it. but itll still work for biological filteration.

nishant

[SLOreefer]

using a skimmer with a refugium is useless...really all youa re doing is starving your macro algae which will inturn pollute your tank more making your skimmer work harder depleating the whole purpose of a refugium. do one or the other. a refugium will still be worth it even though the pods will not make it back to the tank alive most likely. the macro algae will still be removing nitrates from your water which is a majority of the purpose.

[mxpro32]

on my penguin mini i find live pods of all sizes even pretty big stuck to the filter pad.  occasionally i take the pad out and drop them back in the tank.  so maybe they would survive the trip through other pumps as well.  i have a question also. if you have a refugium with lots of caulerpa taking up nutrients from the water do you still have to do water changes so often?  with skimmers you dont have to because they remove the wastes.  would a refugium do the same thing?

[Sahin]

Skimmers dont remove wastes in that sense.  They do remove proteins and a few other chemicals.  But thier main purpose is removing proteins.  You still have to do water changes.

 

A skimmer allows one to get away with doing perhaps slightly less water changes since the proteins removed otherwise would have been converted to nitrates.

 

Water changes remove a lot of other toxic buildup other than nitrates etc.  And in a reef setup, water changes bring in fresh nutrients such as calcium and the other essential elemtns etc.