Roller mats and pods

DoctaReef

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So I was thinking the other day, as I dumped an order of Algae Barn 5280 pods in my sump next to my Red Sea ReefMat:

Does a roller/filter sock remove pods from an aquarium and work against you trying to create a healthy population?
 

Fish Styx

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So I was thinking the other day, as I dumped an order of Algae Barn 5280 pods in my sump next to my Red Sea ReefMat:

Does a roller/filter sock remove pods from an aquarium and work against you trying to create a healthy population?
It would depend on the layout of your sump, but your rollermat should be the first stop for water entering from the overflow. In this regard, I'm gonna say no. You'll have breeding population in the sump and DT, so any pods captured in the rollermat would be negligible, at best and no different from a filter sock.
 
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ElementReefer

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Everything in your system is gonna go thru the roller mat eventually unless it’s too big to go through the weir or its benthic.

So yes, it’s gonna remove pods in the water column, but pods are usually benthic so it won’t matter.
 

twentyleagues

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Simple answer is yes.
Pods will colonize many areas of the tank, If I look into my internal overflow from the side there is a large population of pods living there. If I had any mechanical filtration, I have no doubt they would be stuck in it. When I used filter socks in the past I would find all sorts of pods, bristleworms, brittle stars and such in them.
 

alonsooro

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It would depend on the layout of your sump, but your rollermat should be the first stop for water entering from the overflow. In this regard, I'm gonna say no. You'll have breeding population in the sump and DT, so any pods captured in the rollermat would be negligible, at best and no different from a filter sock.
This is the best analogy, since a filter sock does the same thing. Many pods will be kept here, but you still have enough on other areas :)
 

BigAl07

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Technically YES they can get filtered out but IMHO less than in Filter Socks and not enough to even take into account.

Filter socks, when we pull them from the tank we do it all at once. Whatever is in there (and there were a lot when I ran socks) gets removed from the system as whole. I would manually remove anything large enough to pick out and add it to the tank as a SNACK when running socks.

Roller Mat, moves up out of the water a pinch at a time. I would imagine "some/few" pods could wiggle around and get back into the water column but since they haven't had time to "Set Up Shop" in the new section of Roller Mat I don't think as MANY will be trapped as in a SOCK.

Even if all that get into the RM get removed I don't feel like it's a big deal in the least. The housing on my RedSea Roller Mat is colonized with oddles and oddles of Copepods and Isopods. For fun I will go down there late at night with a flashlight and it's mind blowing the sheer # of various "Pods" down there. It's a lot of fun to look at some of the "smaller inhabitants" of the tank down in the sump now and again.

This is just my uneducated "2 cents" and take it for what you paid for it :)
 

Subsea

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“Does a roller/filter sock remove pods from an aquarium and work against you trying to create a healthy population?“

I don’t wear socks in my refugium because the detritus trapped is food for the pods and many more detrivores that feed the microbial loop. In 25 years, the mud filter has increased in depth 0.5”; mud is spongy to the touch and is crawling with worms & such.
 
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twentyleagues

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“Does a roller/filter sock remove pods from an aquarium and work against you trying to create a healthy population?“

I don’t wear socks in my refugium because the detritus trapped is food for the pods and many more detrivores that feed the microbial loop. In 25 years, the mud filter has increased in depth 0.5”; mud is spongy to the touch and is crawling with worms & such.
Yeah me too! That is I dont wear socks in my fuge either. I like to feel the sand between my toes!
JK I get it. I also do not use any mechanical filtration except a skimmer.
 

Subsea

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Yeah me too! That is I dont wear socks in my fuge either. I like to feel the sand between my toes!
JK I get it. I also do not use any mechanical filtration except a skimmer.
I am skimmerless. I am all about nutrient recycling and only export when I frag and sell corals and ornamental sponges & seaweeds.

Once a year I do three 50% water changes in three days.
 

twentyleagues

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I am skimmerless. I am all about nutrient recycling and only export when I frag and sell corals and ornamental sponges & seaweeds.

Once a year I do three 50% water changes in three days.
I feel the same-ish. I believe whatever the fish dont eat will feed the pods and what not in the fuge. The fuge is the first stop from the tank then a small pile of rock for a "cryptic" zone and then skimmer and return. I have watched your thread for some time I like what you do! I didnt do water changes for a couple months tank set up last January. Nitrate and phosphate leveled out at 30 and .08 after about 6 weeks, for another 6 weeks it stayed right around those levels. Some of my corals seem to like the water changes though so I started doing more regular ones again. I thought I would test the tank by doing 3 good size wc 20g/wc 2 days apart nitrate went to about 17 and phos didnt budge. About a week later nitrate was again 30. But doing the water change made my hammers puff up real big and the duncans too. They didnt look bad before the change just not as puffy as after. Even a 10g change gets them all puffy again for a day or two.
 

mjszos

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If your tank was a closed loop, without a display or anything else (basically a tube of water with a pump just making a circle through the roller mat), then yes it would negate the pods. However, since there's other areas for the pods to reproduce the loss of those caught in the roller mat should be minimal relative to their reproduction rate in other parts of the tank.
 

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