Refuge or Biopellets

[MarkoD]

I have 2 24watt t5ho bulbs on my fuge with painfully slow flow. Probably less than 100gph and my cheato grows like crazyyyyy. Literally

[wingedfish]

I run vertex pellets , GFO, and a fuge. So I say both. A 23 watt 6500K home depot CF bulb grows cheato great.

[reefgirl189]

I'd really love to do refuge but if it needs to be sized to a third of your overall aquarium size that would be a 60 gallon one for me. I'm not sure I could find the room. I was originally thinking 10-15 but would that just be a wasted effort?

[MarkoD]

Originally Posted by reefgirl189

I'd really love to do refuge but if it needs to be sized to a third of your overall aquarium size that would be a 60 gallon one for me. I'm not sure I could find the room. I was originally thinking 10-15 but would that just be a wasted effort?

I use a 30 gallon tall tank for a 180 gallon display. It works perfectly

[phyto4life]

Sorry to confuse you, but I use 1/3 rd on my tank, with no skimmer and using tap water.

I should stop giving advice.

[Mandosh]

I am a firm believer that pellets do work if done properly, so thats the way I'd go. Why remove the rock though? If you have the room, keep the rock and add the pellets...slowly.

[pscott99]

I do both. Your live rock is very important to your tank.And after reading this I am going to feed phyto.

http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2002-07/eb/index.php

If you tank is already well balanced you must be doing many things right already like diligent water changes.

[tang daddy]

You should run biopellets and a fuge, I had that set up for almost a year running but now am going to get rid of the fuge and run GFO.

I find that the pellets take care of the nitrates and abit of the phosphates but not all the phosphates, the main reason why I am going to run GFO.

Biopellets can be a good thing or bad, I've heard some stories of it screwing up tanks and when they stopped using it the tank was more stable, abit of cyano can pop up here and there is one good example.

Even in a reactor the pellets can sometimes clump in dead spots so quarterly maintanence is a must. Clean the mulch and clumped pellets in a separate saltwater bucket. Also add abit mb7 2 times a month to keep a healthy biological bacteria.

Some pellets need lots of flow while others like the Warner marine say less flow. I am running the vertex pellets now but will be switching to the Warner marine pellets in the new year!