AIO Filtration and copepods/microfauna

[00Dan]

I still have two empty chambers in my Nuvo 40 and I’ve been considering adding rubble or bio media to them. I considered doing a micro refugium but none of the light solutions I’ve seen are appealing so at this point it seems more trouble than its worth.

If I load those two chambers with bio media will I be able to effectively sustain a copepod population? If so, which bio media would be best, live rock rubble or one of the artificial media such as matrix or marinepure?

If I went with the artificial media, would they serve any sort of denitrator function or is the flow in those chambers probably too high?

For reference, my other two return chambers are occupied by my skimmer and a media rack.

 

[bzb]

My return pump is cranked down to the lowest setting. When I measured it, somewhere around 450 GPH. Turnover of 5x, so pretty low flow.

In the chamber after my skimmer it's about 5x12". I've got a handful of rubble in there, and it's where I grow a bundle of chaeto with a cheap LED grow light from Amazon. I pull about a baseball chunk out of it every two weeks. The chamber is absolutely covered in pods, microshrimp, and stomatella. Bunch of feathers, sponges, and all that good stuff, along with a handful of aiptasia and a couple gross bristleworms. The fauna has spilled out into the other chambers so much that I have stomatella living in the dang skimmer. Not the chamber... the actual skimmer, getting blasted by bubbles and high flow.

I have no idea if that's your idea of "sustainable" but it's more than enough for my liking. I'm not feeding a mandarin, though. I imagine if you add one of those 3D-printed pod hotels, you'd probably do well.