Refugium Maintenence......cleaning?

[gnashty]

I set up a fuge when I got a new sump - its not very large, only about 9 gallons worth of space on a 40B DIY sump. Reading the cyano thread had me thinking.....

First some background

I am battling some algae for the last several weeks, red algae on parts of the sand bed and brown algae on the glass and hair algae in overflows and some rock. Probably a combination of issues and I am trying to tackle them individually to no avail so far.

Here are the potential issues and my action:
T5 lamps pushing 11 months (ordering next week, 12 of them so it sux!))

1 of my 2 UV bulbs needs changing (getting bulb this weekend)

Overfeeding (stopped feeding to every other day)

I reduced photo period to actinic a couple hours a day, no daylights (2 days now)

Flow - I have 1 MP40 and 2 K4's and I need some more flow (I plan to relocate 1 K4 to accomodate, working on another MP40)

I changed out my carbon and GFO this past week and beefed up my CUC by 30% or so.

I WC 20% every week, I slacked one week a while back due to travel but I plan to do a 30% change tomorrow (75 gal ish).

Then it occurred to me, I have never cleaned out my fuge since I set it up 6+ months ago. My fuge consists of about 20-30 lb LR, a 2" sandbed, and a ball o chaeto with a HD clip on light over it and a few hermits and stomeys, feather dusters and other beneficial hitchhikers. It is kept under very low flow. Should I remove all the rock and vaccuum the sandbed a bit? any other suggestions I should try?

 

[gnashty]

oh, forgot - I changed my sediment filter on my RO the other day.

how often should I change my membrane? It has been in place since my first post 13 months ago. TDS still reads zero (always has) but I dont know if I trust it. Incoming reads 44-60 normally

 

[crewdawg1981]

A couple of things that I found helped cure cyano for me on my last tank.

- one of those flood lights that Marc Levenson recommends for the fuge. I left mine on 24/7. The week i went from a reverse photo period to 24/7 I saw an die off of the cyano.
- macro algae in the fuge... a ball of Chaeto that got trimmed back every so often.
- vacuum the return section of the sump ever other month to remove any accumulated debris. For that tank, there was actually a significant accumulation of debris and detritus. Cleaning this out helped my tank immensely.
- Better flow (I went from two seios to two MP40s).

I would argue that you're probably underfeeding at once every other day. Proper nutrient export with skimming and such should solve any problem from feeding every day.

As for the RO Membrane... I would just change it when TDS starts creeping up above 0. 40-50 incoming is actually pretty good. My dad's reads muuuuch higher in FL. Since the water in Atlanta generally has a low TDS I think membranes tend to last longer assuming they arent subject to extremely hot water.

 

[gnashty]

Crewdawg1981;600446 wrote: A couple of things that I found helped cure cyano for me on my last tank.

- one of those flood lights that Marc Levenson recommends for the fuge. I left mine on 24/7. The week i went from a reverse photo period to 24/7 I saw an die off of the cyano.
- macro algae in the fuge... a ball of Chaeto that got trimmed back every so often.
- vacuum the return section of the sump ever other month to remove any accumulated debris. For that tank, there was actually a significant accumulation of debris and detritus. Cleaning this out helped my tank immensely.
- Better flow (I went from two seios to two MP40s).

I would argue that you're probably underfeeding at once every other day. Proper nutrient export with skimming and such should solve any problem from feeding every day.

As for the RO Membrane... I would just change it when TDS starts creeping up above 0. 40-50 incoming is actually pretty good. My dad's reads muuuuch higher in FL. Since the water in Atlanta generally has a low TDS I think membranes tend to last longer assuming they arent subject to extremely hot water.

I have the light mark recommends and do have a ball of chaeto in the sump, it stopped growing though. I need to program the light cycle. right now it gets turned on when I need to see the sump and is left on overnight...but this is sporadic at best. I really need to just feed less each day rather than 2 everyday. I feed rods but even a small amount is too much, pellets get lost in the rock before they get to them. I know flow is playing a major role because I know where the dead spots are and the algae is accumulating largely in those areas. Im going to clean the sump out tomorrow.