Lance_Krueger
02-04-2007, 12:17 AM
Okay, I thought I had this all planned out. Was going to have a breeder rack for my discus pairs, that holds two shelves of seven bare bottom 29 gallon tanks (total of 14 twenty nine gallon tanks). Each tank is drilled for a 1 inch bulkhead, and has an overflow attached to it. I've heard so much positive about using a central, wet/dry system on a breeder rack for discus, I was going to hook each breeder tank into a central system for just the breeder rack. Cary does it, Jason Niemi highly recommended it. But with a wet/dry, you're still left with nitrates, which you would have to keep low with water changes, I know. A friend of mine that used to be into discus, and is now into saltwater told me that I needed to look into freshwater refugiums. He told me they are the rage in saltwater tanks, and how they will allow you to go even a step further and have an even more natural filter to give the breeders and the fry even better water quality.
So here's my idea. I've got fourteen 29 gallon tanks, which comes out to about 400 gallons of water in the breeder tanks. Then, I'm going to build a sump beneath the rack, which will be 96 inches Long x 36 inches Wide x 12 inches High, which will be about 180 gallons. The total system (which includes all breeder tanks and sump) will be right around 600 gallons of water. I was thinking about making part of the sump a refugium, where I would have fast growing stem plants, and/or some floating plants. Since this is a breeder setup and I'll be keeping the microsiemens at 60-100 with R/O, the Ph will be acidic, so there will be ammonium instead of ammonia. So I've read that these plants will suck up the ammonium and the nitrate, which should give excellent water quality. I've been doing a lot of searching on the saltwater forums about refugiums and natural filtration, but this is saltwater info, not freshwater. Supposedly a lot of the info is interchangeable, but there are few scraps of info on people that have done this in freshwater, much less with discus, and no info especially on a large breeder discus rack like what I'm planning. I'm trying to figure out some of this stuff in my head before plunging into this and making some expensive mistakes, so here are some questions for you plant gurus:
1. How large should the refugium be? In the saltwater info I've been reading up on, they say 10-20 percent of the display tanks space, but I didn't know if that was right for freshwater. How large should I make the refugium, considering I'm making this huge sump homemade, and can make the refugium any size? Should I forget about a separate refugium, and just let the plants be in the entire sump? The saltwater guys say it has to be separate for the following reason in question #2.
2. The saltwater guys also say that the flow through the refugium should be about one turn per hour. In other words, if you have a 10 gallon refugium, the water flowing into it should be choked down to about 10 gallons per hour, with the remaining water going into the sump. Any thoughts on this?
3. I was thinking about using fast growing stem plants (maybe like Milfoil, Hornwort, water sprite, or anachris) in the refugium. Are there any recommendations for which of these stem plants (or any others I didn't mention) that would do good in the acidic, 82 degree discus waters? Also, do I need to plant these in some sort of substrate, or can they just float around in the water column of the refugium? If I need a substrate, what would you recommend?
4. Any thoughts on Deep Sand Beds (DSB's) in the freshwater refugium? It's supposed to rid the water of nitrates, but if the plants do this, then why would I need it? Or do they work hand-in-hand?
5. I also thought about using some floating plants, since they are supposedly great for taking up nutrients. I was thinking about water lettuce, or hyacinth, or duckweed. Would these be better than stem plants, or used in combination with stem plants, or would stem plants alone be the best? Which floating plants would work the best in the acidic, 82 degree discus water in my breeding rack? Obviously with floating plants, I would not need any kind of substrate, right?
6. I would want this plant scrubber filter to be as simple and low maintenance and low tech as possible. I don't want to dose anything (I figured the fish waste should be enough), and want to have the most basic (i.e. cheap) of lighting, but will get whatever the amount of lighting I need. Would this work? Or would I just be killing the plants by this setup?
7. Regarding lighting, should I have this going 24 hours a day, or just for half the day? The saltwater guys want you to have the light over your refugium going during the night hours, when the main display tanks light is off. They say that without a refugium, the PH drops during the night since the corals and live rock are producing CO2 at night (I think). With a refugium run in a reverse lighting cycle to the main tank, the Ph stays consistent, since the refugium combats the CO2 since it's absorbing any CO2 produced in the main tank during the night.
So, with my breeder setup, I will have no live rock, or coral, and not even a sponge filter running in each bare-bottom breeder tank. So should I run the light's 24 hours a day so the plants continuously produce oxygen and consume the ammonium and nitrate? Or are there problems for the plants doing this? One concern I have is algae may take over, but in a refugium, supposedly algae is a good thing because it is supposedly very good at eating up the nutrients too. Or should I run the lights only at night, or only during the day? If so, why?
8. I had originally thought of this as a central wet/dry setup. But now that I'm thinking about doing this natural veggie filter, is there a need for bio balls and a trickle tower? Or can I just use the plants as my 24 hour a day filter? The thing I want for this breeder setup is very good quality water, that is very consistent for the babies.
9. The way I've got this thing figured out, I have the capability of setting it up to do daily, automatic water changes of about 25% (by draining the sump). What I was concerned about is will this cause problems for the plants, since the water will have so few nutrients in it? Will the plants survive with 25% water changes with very pure R/O water?
10. One of the advantages of the refugium that the saltwater guys really love is that in their refugiums, they have all kinds of invertebrates living in the refugium that would normally get eaten in the display tank. These little critters, like shrimp and worms, and all kinds of critters are having baby's in the refugium, which flow into the display tank, and feed the corals. I thought this would be cool for my baby discus to have other kinds of live food available to them in the breeder tanks while on the backs of the parents. I would think about it as a 24 hour a day feeding setup. Better, I would think than putting baby brine shrimp in several times per day. So my question is, what kind of critters would I want to have in my refugium, to keep the plants healthy and to create a food source for my discus fry? I've read about Singapore, Cherry, Ghost, Glass and Amano Shrimp, and even Malaysian Trumpet Snails, freshwater clams and zebra mussels. Some have even mentioned blackworms and tubifex, but I don't know about those since the latter are known as disease carriers. I would think these last few would be good if you had a substrate, and I'm not sure if I need a substrate for what I'm doing here. Any thoughts on what might be good in my refugium to feed my discus babies?
I know these questions are long, but I tried to number them to make it easy to separate. Please let me know any thoughts. All info is appreciated.
Lance Krueger
So here's my idea. I've got fourteen 29 gallon tanks, which comes out to about 400 gallons of water in the breeder tanks. Then, I'm going to build a sump beneath the rack, which will be 96 inches Long x 36 inches Wide x 12 inches High, which will be about 180 gallons. The total system (which includes all breeder tanks and sump) will be right around 600 gallons of water. I was thinking about making part of the sump a refugium, where I would have fast growing stem plants, and/or some floating plants. Since this is a breeder setup and I'll be keeping the microsiemens at 60-100 with R/O, the Ph will be acidic, so there will be ammonium instead of ammonia. So I've read that these plants will suck up the ammonium and the nitrate, which should give excellent water quality. I've been doing a lot of searching on the saltwater forums about refugiums and natural filtration, but this is saltwater info, not freshwater. Supposedly a lot of the info is interchangeable, but there are few scraps of info on people that have done this in freshwater, much less with discus, and no info especially on a large breeder discus rack like what I'm planning. I'm trying to figure out some of this stuff in my head before plunging into this and making some expensive mistakes, so here are some questions for you plant gurus:
1. How large should the refugium be? In the saltwater info I've been reading up on, they say 10-20 percent of the display tanks space, but I didn't know if that was right for freshwater. How large should I make the refugium, considering I'm making this huge sump homemade, and can make the refugium any size? Should I forget about a separate refugium, and just let the plants be in the entire sump? The saltwater guys say it has to be separate for the following reason in question #2.
2. The saltwater guys also say that the flow through the refugium should be about one turn per hour. In other words, if you have a 10 gallon refugium, the water flowing into it should be choked down to about 10 gallons per hour, with the remaining water going into the sump. Any thoughts on this?
3. I was thinking about using fast growing stem plants (maybe like Milfoil, Hornwort, water sprite, or anachris) in the refugium. Are there any recommendations for which of these stem plants (or any others I didn't mention) that would do good in the acidic, 82 degree discus waters? Also, do I need to plant these in some sort of substrate, or can they just float around in the water column of the refugium? If I need a substrate, what would you recommend?
4. Any thoughts on Deep Sand Beds (DSB's) in the freshwater refugium? It's supposed to rid the water of nitrates, but if the plants do this, then why would I need it? Or do they work hand-in-hand?
5. I also thought about using some floating plants, since they are supposedly great for taking up nutrients. I was thinking about water lettuce, or hyacinth, or duckweed. Would these be better than stem plants, or used in combination with stem plants, or would stem plants alone be the best? Which floating plants would work the best in the acidic, 82 degree discus water in my breeding rack? Obviously with floating plants, I would not need any kind of substrate, right?
6. I would want this plant scrubber filter to be as simple and low maintenance and low tech as possible. I don't want to dose anything (I figured the fish waste should be enough), and want to have the most basic (i.e. cheap) of lighting, but will get whatever the amount of lighting I need. Would this work? Or would I just be killing the plants by this setup?
7. Regarding lighting, should I have this going 24 hours a day, or just for half the day? The saltwater guys want you to have the light over your refugium going during the night hours, when the main display tanks light is off. They say that without a refugium, the PH drops during the night since the corals and live rock are producing CO2 at night (I think). With a refugium run in a reverse lighting cycle to the main tank, the Ph stays consistent, since the refugium combats the CO2 since it's absorbing any CO2 produced in the main tank during the night.
So, with my breeder setup, I will have no live rock, or coral, and not even a sponge filter running in each bare-bottom breeder tank. So should I run the light's 24 hours a day so the plants continuously produce oxygen and consume the ammonium and nitrate? Or are there problems for the plants doing this? One concern I have is algae may take over, but in a refugium, supposedly algae is a good thing because it is supposedly very good at eating up the nutrients too. Or should I run the lights only at night, or only during the day? If so, why?
8. I had originally thought of this as a central wet/dry setup. But now that I'm thinking about doing this natural veggie filter, is there a need for bio balls and a trickle tower? Or can I just use the plants as my 24 hour a day filter? The thing I want for this breeder setup is very good quality water, that is very consistent for the babies.
9. The way I've got this thing figured out, I have the capability of setting it up to do daily, automatic water changes of about 25% (by draining the sump). What I was concerned about is will this cause problems for the plants, since the water will have so few nutrients in it? Will the plants survive with 25% water changes with very pure R/O water?
10. One of the advantages of the refugium that the saltwater guys really love is that in their refugiums, they have all kinds of invertebrates living in the refugium that would normally get eaten in the display tank. These little critters, like shrimp and worms, and all kinds of critters are having baby's in the refugium, which flow into the display tank, and feed the corals. I thought this would be cool for my baby discus to have other kinds of live food available to them in the breeder tanks while on the backs of the parents. I would think about it as a 24 hour a day feeding setup. Better, I would think than putting baby brine shrimp in several times per day. So my question is, what kind of critters would I want to have in my refugium, to keep the plants healthy and to create a food source for my discus fry? I've read about Singapore, Cherry, Ghost, Glass and Amano Shrimp, and even Malaysian Trumpet Snails, freshwater clams and zebra mussels. Some have even mentioned blackworms and tubifex, but I don't know about those since the latter are known as disease carriers. I would think these last few would be good if you had a substrate, and I'm not sure if I need a substrate for what I'm doing here. Any thoughts on what might be good in my refugium to feed my discus babies?
I know these questions are long, but I tried to number them to make it easy to separate. Please let me know any thoughts. All info is appreciated.
Lance Krueger