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Looking to fill refugium - Jersey City & around

J

Joachim

Hello,

I came back from holidays to find every single invertebrate I had dead (right after ordering a 100$ on aquarium depot).
My aquarium was too small (5G) for me, to sensitive to any variation and Since I am a beginner on saltwater, I didn't think about the salinity spike from evaporation.

Anyhow, now I know and I have turned the 5G into a refugium and put everything still alive in the 10G.

I am looking to buy:
- some more live rocks
- a pistol shrimp to go with my poor goby who lost his friend
- anything I could stock the refugium with (chaeto, caulerpa, whatever you put in there)

I will figure something out for lighting at 6500k but this is a picture of how it looks like now. Don't mind the syringe ^^.
 

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Mark_C

Mark_C

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Macroalgae shouldn't be a main concern right now, and as long as you're only running with soft corals you should be OK.
The sump/fuge is most useful at the moment by providing you with a bit of extra water volume, though dropping in some snails and some chaeto wouldn't hurt, as long as you have the lighting for it. A simple Home Depot or Lowes clamp on light with a decent light bulb in it will do wonders for macroalgae growth, just be sure the sump/fuge is far enough away from your main tank that the light doesn't encourage growth in the main tank.
In a tank that size a water change of 2 gallons a week should be good enough to control waste.
In any small system its essential to keep the water level at a constant, which means an Auto Top Off. I have two nano tanks going at the moment and both are using a Tunze Nano ATO (about $90 but you can find used ones on ebay for $50-60). Without doubt this woill be the most important piece of equipment in a small tank.
Pistol shrimp are diggers and tunnelers, unless you're going to go with an inch or two on the sand bed it might be best to give it a skip. Look into sexy shrimp or pom-pom crabs for interesting activity in the tank if you're keeping bare bottom.
 
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