sponges or LR in Sump?

[atvdave]

I've been doing a SW tank for over 2 years now but still am somewhat of a newbie.

My nitrates have been very high ever since my tank was about 7 months old. No matter what I did they hardly ever came down. Including water changes.

Reading on this forum I have seen and read about many people that have LR in there sumps. Also most have said that sponges are nitrate magnets.

What I'm going to do is get rid of my sponges and put some LR in my sump. But what I don't know... Do you have to run a light in the sump for the LR? If it's dark in the sump will the LR work at all?

For those who are running LR in the sumps please educate me.

Thanks
Dave

[smcdonn]

I just run a clip on lamp (the ones you can buy for your desk), and just put a 100watt florescent bulb in it. It runs cool, makes my macro(also excellent for a sump) grow like crazy and I even seem some mushrooms and such growing on the live rock in the sump. I highly recomend this setup due to the fact that it doesn't add much, if any heat and keeps everything alive. Some people also say to run the light on the sump opposite of the lights on your tank. I don't know how true this is as I just run mine 24/7. Hope this helps you a bit. cheers

Sean

[fsn77]

Sponges -- are you talking about live sponges? Or, filter pads? Nothing wrong with having live sponges in your sump, as they filter feed. Regular old filter pads can become nitrate factories as they age, not nitrate magnets (I'm guessing you meant factories since you already know your nitrate levels are high).

You can have LR in a sump without any lighting for it. The bacteria that make LR "live" do not require light in order to live.

[Gerad]

you should run a light in the sump (if you choose) opisite of the uther lights. this will help with the PH swing from night to day. You alsow donot whant to run it 24/7 if you have micro algee like calaptera. (parden the spelling) from my understanding it will become a sexual and take over the main tank. i have a single 18 pc over mine and it is doing fine. but i don't see the problem with runing a 100wat light.

[atvdave]

<a href=showthread.php?
s=&postid=7591010#post7591010 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by fsn77
Sponges -- are you talking about live sponges? Or, filter pads? Nothing wrong with having live sponges in your sump, as they filter feed. Regular old filter pads can become nitrate factories as they age, not nitrate magnets (I'm guessing you meant factories since you already know your nitrate levels are high).


Your right.. I was talking about dry filter pad's.. and I also meant nitrate factories.

[fsn77]

Thought so... :)

If you add LR to your sump, depending on how much space you have, rubble works good and costs less than buying larger pieces of LR. Between my sump and refugium, I have about 12 lbs of rubble, with room for more. It's also nice because there's always rubble around if / when you want to frag a coral.