My fuge just does not work, bleh =(

[grimlock3000]

I can not get any good results with my AC300 fuge at all. See here:

At first I was turning the Chaeto a bit brown from too much light. I lowered the time of the light, now hair algae it taking over inside the fuge. I am not find a good combination of getting the Chaeto to grow without a bunch of algae in the fuge as well. Also, the baffle in the fuge is turning into a waste trap and I need to keep siphoning it out. Now this thing is just driving me nuts, I can not get the Chaeto to grow well without the hair algae in there, plus the waste trap...

 

[klam]

That sucks. I have no experiance with aqua fuge but I have an idea that might help the waste trap. I have the aqua clear surface skimmer attachment and that pulls in water from surface where there isn't that much debris/particles. That might help reduce the junk that's getting pulled in from the regular intake attachment.

 

[ellisz]

Does you fuge get light from the main light when it is on? From the pic, are you doing a reverse lighting set up?

If the fuge is getting any light from your main light, kill the little light and see how that goes. You might be getting light from both sources and thus lighting 24hrs a day?

I may have your setup all wrong

I have a HOB filter as my fuge on my 10 gal and I light it only with the bleed off it gets from the main light. Chaeto grows like crazy.

 

[grimlock3000]

I have a surface skimmer, however it is hard to fit that in the tank because the protein skimmer is in the way. If I swap the two, then the surface skimmer is crammed up against the side of the tank and it does not work.

Right now I have the fuge light on the same timer as the daylight bulb, it gets 10 hours of light a day, 15w 6500K PC light. Not much light from my fixture make it into the fuge, though I may try just turning off the fuge light to see what happens. Or I might go without the fuge now that I have 2 pounds/gallon of live rock to try and keep the nitrates down.

 

[klam]

You may already be aware of this, I've read it's best to have your main and fuge lights on reverse schedule. This will help keep your ph level more stable.

 

[grimlock3000]

I went about cleaning my fuge last night and there was an amazing ammount of junk not only before the baffle, but in the Chaeto itself. Made a mess of my whole tank just by moving around the Chaeto. I scrapped the fuge for now, once I do a sump I will try again. Now I have one less tube in the tank, that is a good thing...