Why am I getting 'connection refused' errors in production?

This usually means your connection pool is exhausted. Check your max_connections setting and ensure you're properly releasing connections after use. Also verify that your database server is actually running and accepting connections on the expected port.

How do I increase the connection pool limit?

In your pg_hba.conf, increase max_connections. Also consider using PgBouncer for connection pooling in high-traffic scenarios. PgBouncer sits between your app and PostgreSQL, managing connections more efficiently than your application can.