Freshwater Refugium?

[Halfsleeve]

Hi All I have kept tropical fish for about 20 years now and recently set up a marine reef tank, one little device on my marine tank is a fuge (an extention of the main tank running caulerpa (type of seaweed good for absorbing nitrates) does anyone run similar for there freshwater trops?, my discus tank sometimes suffers with slime algae/Cyno, I was wondering if I setup a small inline tank lit with nitrate absorbing plants to help reduce the imbalance of nitrates and phosphates.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

i don't know of anyone who'se actually done it but i have heard it discussed

you set up some sort of hydroponics connected to the tank, plant some plants in just a few inches of water so they have a decent amount of emerged growth

 

[Halfsleeve]

i don't know of anyone who'se actually done it but i have heard it discussed

you set up some sort of hydroponics connected to the tank, plant some plants in just a few inches of water so they have a decent amount of emerged growth

Sounds like it could be a little experiment, if i get time over the weekend im may set something up.

 

[BHornsey]

Mostly, if you want to go that route, you just plant the tank.
Lots of plants will absorb waste products quite nicely and become a living filter, plus they're nice to look at.
Take a look on the Planted Tank section and see if we can make a convert out of you

 

[Halfsleeve]

Mostly, if you want to go that route, you just plant the tank.
Lots of plants will absorb waste products quite nicely and become a living filter, plus they're nice to look at.
Take a look on the Planted Tank section and see if we can make a convert out of you

 

[andywg]

Mostly, if you want to go that route, you just plant the tank.
Lots of plants will absorb waste products quite nicely and become a living filter, plus they're nice to look at.
Take a look on the Planted Tank section and see if we can make a convert out of you

Indeed, but the conditions for planted tanks generally preclude the keeping of larger fish, or heavier stocking (due to oxygen requirements of the fish bein incompatible with the CO2 retention desired for plants).

I seem to trecall that K.O.D. ustilises some for of fuge/hydroponics system. Or was it T1?

 

[Halfsleeve]

Here's my freshwater tank planting not the prob messy discus maybe

 

[lljdma06]

I wonder if you could somehow adapt the sump principle from SW. Set one up for FW and then plant the sump? The planted sump would be out of the way of the larger fish that make mince-meat out of plants and yet you may get the filtration benefits of the live plants filtering all the water of the aquarium, especially if it's densly planted? I don't know, perhaps just a silly though.

llj

 

[jayjay]

You are likely to loose a lot of the CO2 the plants need though if you are planting a sump.

 

[andywg]

You are likely to loose a lot of the CO2 the plants need though if you are planting a sump.

Yep. Sumps and Plants are not natural bedfellows. You find yourself spending a lot of effor trying ot overcome natural problems between the two aims.

I t can be done, but is far more effort than is worth it.