[cuttingrass]

i have 2 questions.
1) what kids of things should i add to my refuge, i have pretty deep sand in it, and i put all my left over live rock down there, theres a lot of it. every thing is getting a light brown algea, is this algea good or bad down there?

2) i have a berlin turbo skimmer hanging on my sump, and everyone is saying a skimmer should fill a collection cup at least once a week. i have a hard time filling gunk up to the top of the black rim at the bottom of the collectoin cup. how much should this skimmer be taking out of a 30 gallon containg, several hermits,coral banded shrimp, 3 emralds, several snails, 1 clown, frogspawn, rock with some mushrooms, rock with some zoos, and some xenias.

[CSeaSee]

That sounds like a pretty light bioload to me, so your skimmer probably isn't taking a whole lot out of the system. Especially if you don't feed heavily, which you probably don't.
If my had a fuge with brown algae, I wouldn't worry about it too much. If it bothers you, you could always increase the flow rate. But the algae is taking up nutrients, which is what it's supposed to do. So as long as you don't have a visual problem, I wouldn't worry about it.

[Reefland]

A refugium is just a safe-haven for life you do not want preyed upon in the display, hense you can add anything you want so long as the livestocks conditional needs are met. Most people use refugiums as another vessel for natural filtration and therefore add macro algae such as Chaeto or various Caulerpa sp. algae. I personally wouldn't worry about any nuisance algae growing in a vegetable filter; this is what they are for, to provide a place for this algae to consume nutrients outside of the visible display.

[cuttingrass]

For the algae’s you mentions what kind of lighting is needed; right now I just have a regular fluorescent that came on a 20 gallon tank.

[Reefland]

That should be ok although a more intense lighting like PC or VHO would be better.