refugium questions

[electriceelcat]

Hi everyone, I am new here and I am looking for help in building a refugium. I would like to place a 40 gallon tank below my 220 gallon tropheus tank. My goal would be to have something nice to look at that would help to remove nitrates from the tank on top. I would like to do some floating plants and there would be a tight lid on the refugium so the plants would have to like high humidity. My water is also very hard so the plants would have to like hard water. Thank you in advance for any help you can offer.

[JoeGREEEN]

if you are using a 40 gallon long refugium you can use mangrove pods to suck up nitrates and they can be trimmed to dwarf them small. I use mangrove pods in my hardwater freshwater sumps/filter and they are thriving.

I pick up my pods, that wash way up the beach shore and are near dryed up & I take them home and revive the pods in hard tap water.

I see pods bieng sold all the time on ebay & CL.

if this is not an uption there are many plants that can do well in hard water such as hornwort and grow fast in low light,