Do I Need to Upgrade my Equipment if I am Adding an External Refugium?

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Mannydouhnut

Aquarium Advice Activist
Joined
Sep 26, 2012
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I am currently planning on adding a 150 gallon Rubbermaid horse trough to my 75 gallon system with a large sump that holds around 30 gallons of water. My sump already has a refugium that holds around 5 or so gallons of water and I have a skimmer that easily handles my current amount of stock and is rated up to 180 gallons but can really only handle maybe a heavily stocked 125 with all of the mods I've made and maybe a heavily stocked 90 without the mods. I have a BRS Dual Media Reactor that I maintain
exactly as BRS recommends. I dose Kalkwassser using my ATO and I dose 3 tea spoons for every 5 gallons. I have lots of caulerpa and mangroves in my current fuge I do 10 gallon water changes on a weekly basis and haven't seen any nuisance algae in my tank in over 3 months my tank is 6 months old. I am heavily stocked and haven't had any fish die or even show any sign of sickness in more than 3 months. I have a lot of rock I'm talking 120 pounds when it's dry of top shelf premium dry rock and it's not that dense stuff that everyone is using now a days that's dyed purple. I will be putting crushed coral and 30 pounds of that rock that is artificially dyed purple rock in there that I have lying in a basket in my basement. I will most likely only be adding my pair of Sailfin Jawfish so I can try to breed them and maybe a few Sea Horses. The refugium will have all sorts of Macroalgaes growing in it and of course some mangroves. I will be only running like 800 or so gallons through it every hour so the plants and algaes in it can thoroughly do there jobs and but I will have a few small koralias in there as well. If I did all this would I really have to upgrade all my equipment or will my current setup suffice.
 
IMO If your skimmer is able to handle the bio load now it will be ok with the added water volume 2 small fish wont add much to the over all system plus adding more rock and macro algae can only help
 
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