Miracle mud or live sand?

[seismic]

Hi folks,

I'm in the midst of setting up a refugium for my reef tank which has been running since 2005.

Which one would you guys recommend to use, miracle mud or live sand ? Im planning to keep chaeto in the fuge.

Is it safe to start a refugium when the tank is already established ?

Thanks for all the inputs!!

 

[ecobalance]

Live sand

I would go with the live sand.Miricle mud needs to be changed when exuasted[much sooner than sand]and it has to sit for a day or two before you can start the pumps.It wouldn't be a bad idea to put it in only a portion of the refugium,and than cover with a little sand to eliminate the waiting period.The sand should elimanate the cloudiness associated with miricle mud,and would be a good area for a mangrove.

 

[seismic]

Thanks eco. Appreciate your input. I was leaning towards sand as well, but just wanted to make sure I'm doing the right thing. Im planning to run a 150W MH 12000k bulb on top of the refugium. The reason I'm going for this is it will also serve as a sps frag tray while I'm acclimating etc. Will this light be too much for the chaeto ?

 

[Skimmy]

miracle mud is not the product it is promoted as,
it's not from the ocean,
the main ingredients are heavy metals like aluminum, titanium, and iron,
and it is waay too costly for no better results than sand(in fact, worse results).
rubble live rock is even better than sand because the copapods and amphipods can more readily colonize the increased surface area, and it promotes the growth of sponges and tunicates far better than sand or mud, which imo, are some of the best natural filters there are.

 

[seismic]

Can I put rubble live rock on top of this live sand or just rubble live rock from the bottom itself ? Can I crush live rocks and make the rubble, I think it should not be a problem right ?

Thaks for the advise on the miracle mud.

 

[MikeS]

I'd skip the sand altogether and just use rubble rock...unless you are trying to make a remote DSB, then that's a whole different ball game...

MikeS

 

[seismic]

I guess using the rubble cuts down the risk of building up hydrogen suplhide as well. What about the lighting, is it too much or good enough ?

 

[Jobiwan]

It's probably ok for the chaeto, your frag tray could go on the top level of the tank and the chaeto below it if you are using egg crate for the frags, just don't cover the whole surface of the tank with your egg crate, leave room on one end to harvest the chaeto without disturbing your frags, that will diffuse and reduce the light to the chaeto which should be fine, my chaeto thrives under PC's....BTW check out Walt Smith's Fiji Refugium Starter Mud, it's natural harvested mud, none of this synthetic snake oil garbage, I'm doing a remote DSB, the mud will be mixed in with the bottom three inches of oolitic fine sand, a couple of inches of oolitic on top of that, I'm doing it that way to grow seagrass, they like lot's of nutrients down deep, but for your purpose around five inches or so straight oolitic sugar sand would be good if you are going DSB w/chaeto...

 

[seismic]

Thanks jobiwan. When you say you mix the mud and sand, do you mean that you actually mix them up together, so you get some sort of a mud-sand kinda paste or something ? I might give this a try !! What ratio of mud-sand are you using ?? I'm not planning for a DSB, maybe 2" max.

 

[Jobiwan]

I'm gonna mix the mud with the bottom layer of sand, a bucket of the Fiji mud weighs 12 pounds, and it will take 100 pounds of oolitic in my size fuge for 3 inches of depth, so the mud will be just a small part of the total volume of substrate, I'm doing it in the bottom 3 inches because the seagrass likes to be down deep, I'll cap the bottom layer with about another 3" of plain oolitic, it is just something I'm experimenting with since everything you read about seagrass talks about how they like lots of nutrients and come from areas that are predominantly mud (I'm thinking the mud might add something in addition to all the minerals in oolitic), and they like deep sandbeds in the captive environs, but I honestly don't know what I'm really doing/accomplishing here, we will see how it works. The Figi mud cost around $50.00 from foster/smith, so playing around with more than 1 bucket didn't appeal to me mixing it might give you good results, my fuge in 34"l x 19"w, so with a 2" bed and possibly smaller dimensions than mine you would have a much higher mud to sand ratio, that may be a good thing for what you are doing... Reef Central has a sand bed depth calculator on the laft side of their home page that will give you an idea of how much substrate you will need...

 

[seismic]

IS there any problem starting a refugium on an established tank. Do I need some cycle time or is it ready to go as soon as it's set up ?

 

[Jobiwan]

The question is are you going to have any organic matter that will decompose and hence produce undesireable by products that will pollute your tank. If you use oolitic sand (I like seachem's, I bought 200 pounds of it), there will be nothing substantial that will decay, the minute amount of organics present will slowly disperse and feed your sand bed, I innoculate the top layer of mine with detritus... no cycling necessary, hooking it up immediately to your tank will just speed the establishment of bacteria in your sand bed, I wouldn't even rinse the oolitic, the dust is good for your corals etc and the cloudiness will clear up in a day or less as it rapidly dissolves and adds calcium and trace elements to the water, just think of Aragamilk, Purple Up, Liquid Reactor, etc....Commercial live sand is a total waste of money BTW, the few bacteria that survive anaerobically in a bag for weeks or months do you no good, it will take no time for bacteria to establish and you will have your own live sand. Nothing wrong with getting a little live sand from a friends healthy tank to promote biodiversity... Another cool thing about oolitic (It is a precipitate found at the edge of reefs that occurs naturally from sea water) is that is dissolves more rapidly than any other subtrate that is larger, you get a minor calcium reactor effect, small amounts of trace elements etc, over time you add more to replace the dissolved sand...Nice setup on your tank BTW....

 

[seismic]

Thanks jobiwan for all your explanation. I think Im going the mud-sand mix way as well. By the way, Im looking forward for photos of your tank once its up!!!! Its gonna be an awesome one!

 

[spanko]

miracle mud is not the product it is promoted as,
it's not from the ocean,
the main ingredients are heavy metals like aluminum, titanium, and iron,
and it is waay too costly for no better results than sand(in fact, worse results).
rubble live rock is even better than sand because the copapods and amphipods can more readily colonize the increased surface area, and it promotes the growth of sponges and tunicates far better than sand or mud, which imo, are some of the best natural filters there are.

I agree with this, your LFS that cures rock should have a lot of "stuff" in the bottom of their curing tanks that they would sell to you that would work well for this.

JMO FWIW

 

[bbehring]

I have a fuge and run 5" DSB with cheato. Placed several small rubble rocks ontop of the sand for all the critters to hide/populate in. threw in some narsarrius snails, bristle worms and mini brittle stars at the beginning and it's a flurishing fuge. Have to trim back my cheato about 1x per month. The idea of getting a small baggie of sand from another reef friend is a good one. For what ever reason, I had a hard time with my LFS around my area wanting to provide me with any live sand. Ended up getting from a reef friend in my area. There was a sand swap program some time ago on one forum that I noticed. Never saw anything more on it thought, not sure what happened? Sounded like a fun idea to intoduce biodiversity. The idea was get 30 to 50 people to ship sand to one person and they would then put all the sand together mixed into one tank and then take a small scoop and ship back to you. So you would have the benifet of having sand from 30 to 50 different reef tanks. Anyone know what happened to that program?

 

[seismic]

Im having problems sourcing for chaeto here. None of the LFS that I know of carry chaeto. Any online reef store ships to Malaysia ? If any reefers here ship to Malaysia, let me know, I'll pay for all shipping charges etc.

 

[Jobiwan]

I'll give you a bunch, I just checked shipping to Malaysia on www.usps.gov, for 1 pound 8 ounces it is $13.00 for first class international (that is airmail, it will take at least a week, maybe more, time is not specified). For international priorty it is about $23.00, 6 - 10 day delivery. I will ship it damp, it should survive the shipping ordeal, doubt if the copepods/bristleworms etc would. One possible problem: your customs may not allow it in the country, there is a chance it would be confiscated, some countries are tight about allowing plant material in, don't know about Malaysia, so there is that risk.

 

[seismic]

Jobiwan, thanks for the offer. I will check with the customs on quarantine regulations etc. Will let you know.

 

[angelfish]

Jobiwan, thanks for the offer. I will check with the customs on quarantine regulations etc. Will let you know.

Hi Seismic,

Some reefers keeping chaeto here in SG. Sometimes they put it on sale in a forum locally. Why not you try to get it from SG, since it's nearer to you.

Regards
Angelfish

 

[billaweed]

I'd skip the sand altogether and just use rubble rock...unless you are trying to make a remote DSB, then that's a whole different ball game...

MikeS

thats what I did. I just filled my refugium about half way with rubble rock and used a 55w PC light . I also just have cheato for Macro.