[Music]
hey guys we haven't come in this way in
a long time today i want to focus on the
5 gallon gravity fed refusium
[Music]
all right guys today
we're going up to the macro algae
refusium i'm going to show you around
new viewers i'm going to give you a
quick review of how i did that so let's
get up there right away
and check out the
5 gallon gravity fed refugium
all right this is the way i make my way
up to the top
if you look back here
this is where i plumbed the tank from
and then it runs right down into the 75
gallon
so as i've said before most of you
probably know now all the pods and stuff
don't have to go through a motor
from here into the tank this is how i
plumbed it from the inside
and here's the return
which goes down behind the counter and
into the sump
of the 75 gallon let's go quick take a
look at that
real quick i wanted to give you my
schedule guys coming up i'm on vacation
from august 9th to the 15th so i may do
a live
the sunday before i go on vacation that
would be august
7 or 8 check to see what date it is
august 7.
tom reefer live again 11 30 eastern
standard time usa since we have people
all over the world watching now
all right so here comes the hose
down into there
and right underneath that sponge i have
a c chase syncra 2.0
so what i did there is siliconed a large
suction cup so i can stick it right to
the overflow box wall and what i did
here is i put in a gate valve because i
was having trouble with not enough flow
and too much flow so now i can control
it
it gets pumped up
through the gate valve and into the five
gallon
and then over
the overflow and back down into the tank
[Music]
so right now it's not fully maxed
it's coming out about this hard
which is nice probably about
250 gallons per hour
the issue i'm having with the refugium
is that i'm not seeing a lot of the
growth in all the algae that i put in
there the grassel area is growing
tremendously if the whole thing were red
in there i wouldn't mind but i want to
get a little bit of the green in there
to make it look really nice and colorful
so let's take a look so it's really
grown
and what i've had to do is put the light
more to the right gracelaria like shade
so if you notice on the side towards the
light it's a little yellowish but the
side over here
is nice and red i really like it a lot
[Music]
here's a piece of the calerpa prolifera
it just can't seem to get going now i
probably don't have enough nitrates in
the water as i said before i'm not going
to push it i'm just going to let it go
here's what's left of the codium tall it
started to grow and then
it started to come apart
what i do notice is i'm getting a lot
more
pods growing in here now so what i've
decided to do is not clean this side
if you recall i wanted to keep this
completely
clear on all four sides but that's
defeating the purpose of letting some
stuff grow in here so this side i'm
going to let grow you can see closely
it's growing some algae you see some
pods climbing around there
so i'm not going to clean them off let
them grow let's see what happens there
see those pods climbing around in there
see him
a great hiding place for pods
oh there's that guy back there guys you
got to tell me what that thing is
uh he's going oh there he is look at him
i mentioned the wrong name last video
look at that thing
cool
look at that
i got the hermits in here the hermit
crabs need to be fed i'm afraid there's
not enough algae in there to keep them
alive so this is what i feed them they
won't eat the big leafs
of the gracelaria they'll eat the fuzzy
stuff that forms in the middle and they
pick off the bottom so what i feed them
is this and they go nuts for it let me
show you this came from bio to marine
when i picked up my
tang
and i picked up my file fish this is
called mastic so this is what it looks
like inside it's like balls of it what i
do with it see it's like it's mushy what
i do is i just break off a couple pieces
like this
and drop it right in there
so let me show you what the hermits do
on this
all right here's the tank let me get up
on top
[Music]
and i'll drop a few down in there maybe
i'll try to get lucky and get one right
right next to one
there you go oh right next to it see if
you can see what he does with that
takes him a minute
come on
now they're moving towards it there they
go once they start going at it it's
ravenous they all come on and what's
kind of cool is all those small
particles of it they go down into the 75
gallon and i can see my chromos start to
go for all those so it actually feeds
the whole system
i think that's it guys
what else can i say about it
oh hermit crabs the hermit crabs
maybe we'll do a live you know the tom
reefer family
[Applause]
you