wet/dry into refugium?

[modifyd]

I'm setting up a 155 gal bowfront and would like to do a mixed reef with lots of fish. I have a wet/dry set up now with the Bio-Balls. Now I keep reading about how evil the Bio-Balls are but how great they convert Amonia to nitrate.
If I run from the wet/dry into a refugium would that work for the nitrate problem? If so how large of a refugium would I need? Or is there another way to remove the nitates? Should I just convert the wetdry and how would I do that. I'm assuming that a mixed reef with lots of fish has a heavy bio load so I will use a skimmer(not sure what one yet) as well as about 100-150Lbs of live rock.
Before I forget, I would like to do a DSb in the fuge and was wondering what is the best protien skimmer for the least money spent for a tank like mine?

[modifyd]

No help on this, I searched before I posted this Q's but didn't find much info.

[taku]

Hmm well a lot of bio-balls can generate a huge amount of nitrate and I'm not too sure the best way to remove that amount of nitrate without doing constant water changes weekly etc... because live rock and sand beds just can't keep up with that amount of nitrate production... so what ends up happening is you just have excess nitrate which is bad for most coral and not good for fish in high amounts.

I'm of the opinion the more varied types of filtration the better in addition to good skimming! So I would still run bio-balls, but just run a small amount of them and not a wet/dry tank full of them. I also run filter media I clean/throw out regularly (big bag of that pillow-filling type material rated for marine use and it's super cheap). Carbon too.

The fuge is a great way to remove nutrients, I've had very good luck with no sand in mine... just some live rock rubble that I didn't want in my tank. I also threw 2 crappy flouro's (type that come with 20g tank) over the fuge and bought some Chaetomorph which constantly grows into a giant mat! like I have to use scissors to cut out huge pieces and throw in the garbage.

Anyways you will definitely need a skimmer as well, and if you want a lot of fish, you'll need a bigger skimmer. I'm not too up on skimmers these days because I still have my old euroreef which kicks ***. I heard the newer euro reefs are crappy quality but I don't know this from personal experience as mine is solid, bought back in 2002 or so..

[modifyd]

I'll toss the Bio-balls, Thanks for the reply.

[JAG107]

I tossed my bioballs and use live rock rubble instead, and had between 15-20ppm nitrate, until 3 weeks ago anyway, then I tossed the wet/dry altogether and now have a 10g sump w/ caulerpa, DSB and live rock, I just took the pump out of the wetdry and use it in the sump, now nitrates are zero. Just my $0.02

[modifyd]

Thanks for the info, I'm definitely getting rid of the io balls now.

[pledosophy]

Bio Balls can not create nitrate. It is impossible. The nitrate being created comes from the bio media not being maintained.

IMO with the amount of liverock your planning on using you will not need any biomedia.

It if were me I would remove the rock chamber and just make more room for your refugium.

I would have the tank empty to the skimmer compartment and have that overflow to the refugium compartment.

I have never done a DSB so no help there from me, sorry.

I do run my tanks in a similiar fashion and have zero for nitrates.

Best of Luck