Quality of life in the sump?

[Indytraveler83]

Good afternoon,

I've been having some mysterious fish losses over the past few months, and wasn't entirely sure what was causing it. After watching them for quite some time, i'm 90% sure that my diadema dottyback went from territorial to homicidal in the past few months, as I saw him not just scaring fish out of his "territory" but ripping off scales and fins with intensity. After some time of trying, I was able to lure him into a mason jar full of brine shrimp and put him in the sump.

Aside from the bioload (minimal on a fish like that) is there any disadvantage to him living in the sump? Will he destroy the pod population that lives there? And would his life in the sump be decent, or is that a bad long term environment for him? The section he's in is the refugium, and is full of macro algae, live rock and about half of a 30 gallon sump. I can turn him into the lfs if its a bad idea to keep him there, but i know these guys can be monsters, so I'd hate for him to get pawned off on some unsuspecting customer to continue his homicidal rage...

 

[Ron Reefman]

I have a coral banded shrimp and an urchin that have been living in my refugium for a couple of years now. I worried about them at first. But they both seem healthy and doing just fine.

But I have no idea what the shrimp could be doing to the pod population in the fuge.