Refugium, How dirty is okay?

[aquaria_rn]

I recently bought some macro algae at my LFS and added it to my 12 gallon CPR hang on refugium. There was a bit of slim algae on the macro, so i cleaned it the best I could and place it in the Refugio, I then noticed that the Refugio became dirty and slimy, it doesn't give an order but looks ugly! (See attached picture). I already cleaned it once, and now it looks ugly again. I have a 72 gallon bowfront. The tank has been setup for over 5 years, the dirty slim is not affecting the main tank and the chemistry is perfect. No variations, all is good. So the question is this, "Aside from the ugly look how beneficial is it to the main tank?". Should i break down the Refugio and get rid of everything, rock, MUD, macro algae and start a new?
Any productive suggestions are greatly appreciated.

[Fredfish]

Is this a newly added refugium? It looks to me like succession biology in action. The slime algae is growing rapidly to fill an unoccupied niche.

If this is the case, you can expect things to keep changing for a while until things growing in the refugium find a balance.

[aquaria_rn]

Hello Fredfish, Not new, the macro algae I added was new. That's when the over growth of what you see in my post staterd to happen. And like I mentioned I cleaned it once.

[Sk8r]

cleaner than mine. Mine's, however, 20 gallon rock/sand/cheato, and I keep inverts to police it.

[wetWolger]

I would clean a lot of that stuff on the top out. If for no other reason it will be blocking the light and ultimately you wont be getting the best use of the water space you have available.

[Fredfish]

Originally Posted by aquaria_rn

Hello Fredfish, Not new, the macro algae I added was new. That's when the over growth of what you see in my post staterd to happen. And like I mentioned I cleaned it once.

Every time you make a change to the organisms in your tank, in this case algae, you will go through some sort of cycle. Either you've changed the nutrients available for growth in some way to create an advantage for the micro algae (slimy), or you've introduced some new variety that does well under the conditions in your tank.

If its not showing up in your main tanks, I would not worry and I definitely would not break down the refugium. Just remove what bothers you and see how things settle out.

FYI, different forms of algae are able to take advantage of different forms of nitrogen. I was able to get rid of the cyanobacteria in my seahorse tank by dosing nitrates to give the macro algae a boost. It seems that boosting the growth rate of the macros caused them to take up more nitrogen of the form that cyanobacteria preferred causing its growth to virtually stop.

Plantbrain in the Marine Plants & Macroalgae forum that can explain this stuff much better than I.

[Paul B]

I took this yesterday on a tiny mangrove Island off Key Largo. Does your refugium look dirtier than that? If not, don't worry about it because the sea is not sterile.