OK, I'm dumping the canister, now what?

messiah023

messiah023

Reefing newb
Well, I've been losing livestock slowly and I believe it's due to my nitrates spiking and always at a higher level due to the canister filter.

I have decided to ditch it, but now what?

I have a 30 gallon tank, no overflows or drilled holes, so I am limited on what I can do.

My thoughts are to go with an AquaC Remora hang-on skimmer and leave it at that, no filter.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
I don't think I want to go the siphon overflow route.

Gimme some ideas!!

I leave you with a wonderful picture I took from my trip to the Georgia Aquarium......
IMG_5084.jpg
 
Why do you think it's the nitrates that killed your animals? What animals died? Nitrates will only kill fish at really high levels (like in the 100s). Lower than that can kill inverts though.

Looking at your livestock list, you have 6 fish in a 30 gallon tank, and that could be causing crowding issues that could be the cause of animal deaths.

Anyways, the Aqua C Remora Pro is a great HOB skimmer. I'd recommend it over any other HOB skimmer.
 
Fishfan, I guess I was lucky with the settings that day! For some reason, ALL my photos came out GREAT!

Biff,
No fish have died, they are all good. I lost a feather duster, fighting conch, 2 turbos and 4 other snails, one emerald crab (yes, mostly inverts) and my poor little xenia. My nitrates are always 20+ ppm. I had a small spike up to 40ppm last week (probably due to the xenia dying) which may have set everything else into motion.
I have no skimmer now and wanted to replace the canister with a skimmer only solution (is that even possible)?

Thanks for any input and, to entice you all again, another photo from GA.
IMG_5092.jpg
 
no they dont need more yellow tangs they have like 200+ yellows. they need more hippos and unicorns. and is that second pic the small tank in the wall with the mandarin?
 
they have amazing flitration and they do amazingly huge water changes but luckly for them most of there tanks connect to each other so its not hard for them
 
I also have a 30g tank. It's a tall version. 24x12 and 24" tall.

I'm using a large CPR HOB refugium. It's the model with the built in skimmer. It's about 24" long and holds like 4.5g or something like that. It's an Aquafuge (large) PS (protein skimmer) It's powered with a MJ 1200 (300gph). I have the bottom filled to the brim with sand. It's between 5" and 6" deep. That handles a lot of nitrates.

The refugium is filled to the top with a seriously huge and ugly ball of cheatomorpha macroalgae. I use a scissor and trim it back monthly so that it doesn't overflow the refugium.

The tank has a DSB too. It varies between 4" and 7" -- depending on where my sand sifting goby is digging this week. He'll dig down 3" or 4" sometimes. He's such a retard. I used to hate it because I wanted my DSB to remain undisturbed. Not anymore. I've changed my mind on that. I WANT him to move my sand bed around. Thats WHY I bought a sand sifting goby in the first place. I just didn't fully understand that they were such prolific diggers when I bought the fish. That explained my initial anger and was what led to his name..... Cracker.

Anyway.........

Here I go again. Rambling off and Reeffreak, Doc and Biff will give me a bunch of shit for rambling. :Cheers: (or would I have been okay if not for that last sentence-- egging you all on?) Help Doc!! :shock:

The goby moving my DSB around all the time-- well, I am starting to think that this may keep my DSB from going nuclear and crashing on me someday in the future. A lot of reefers experience a DSB crash at some point. Maybe if the DSB was constantly in a state of very slow turnover, it would never fill up with waste products? Maybe, by constantly turning the DSB over and over, the goby keeps it mixed up so that any harmful gasses will just be uncovered and work themselves out of the tank through aeration and skimming? Maybe any debris that gets buried, suddenly gets UN buried and can now be eaten by one of a host of sand sifters and bottom dwelling critters in the tank?

I don't think that he disturbs ENOUGH of the DSB at any one time for it to create enough toxicity for it to bother any of my corals in the tank. Maybe slow, but frequent stirring and "burping" of the sand bed would be good for it?

Just a theory I stumbled onto recently. Do I really care WHERE the goby sifts the sand and piles it? Doesn't matter. He's just being a goby. He's doing what gobys do. Can't stop him from doing it. I'm sitting back to wait and see if my theory works. I'll let ya know in 10yrs. :Cheers:

Get yourself a refugium and put cheato in it. Use a DSB in the refugium. If you don't have a good skimmer now--save your money and buy the refugium with the built in skimmer. 2 pieces of equipment in one unit. Works good.

Consider a DSB in the tank. Add it slowly if you want. It will be more work over a longer period of time to add it slowly, but I don't think I'd want to dump 6" of sand into the bottom of an established tank all at once. The refugium doesn't hold that much sand, and any bacteria you have in the tank now will absorb any small spikes that come out of the refugium while it gets cycled.
 
I have a 35 Gallon hex, and was also having Nitrate problems!! I was using an emperor 280 with the bio-wheel. I replaced that with a HOB CSS 65 and added more LR for bio-filtration. My sand bed is about 4 to 5 inches depending on my diamond goby also. By adding more rock and the skimmer, my Nitrates have been stable at around 10 ppm maybe a little under that. Now the only complaint I have about running the tank this way is that there is no way to run any other media such as Chemi-pure or Carbon. I have to add a little 10 gallon HOB filter that I just run Carbon in to crisp up the water. I run this at night for a couple days then remove it. Like Doc told me, You can see it when your sleeping and the fish could care less what it looks like. Good Luck with whatever you choose !!!
 
I'm going to buy a little canister for running carbon. I can place carbon media in my refugium return, but it is very passive. The water isn't forced through the carbon.

With a small canister, I can polish the water and throw the carbon away after 24hrs use. It won't cost me much to use 1 cup of carbon at a time. And I'm positive 1 cup will polish my tank.

Here's that canister:
http://www.drsfostersmith.com/product/prod_display.cfm?pcatid=16742&pvid=67180&productnum=0029764


You could just convert your current canister over to a water polisher. Use it once or twice a month for 24hrs.
 
yeah hang onto the canister filter. You will most likely need it to add any phosphate remover, or silicate remover, and that extra carbon. Just make sure to clean it once a week and the nitrates will stay low. You can prob take out any of the tube like filter media in the canister that traps nitrates.
 
:bounce:A quarter cup of carbon for a couple days a week will polish your water just fine unless you have big dirty fish like Doc does and also use his minimal filtration methods. I love my deep sand beds and my live rock, but I will not do with out my skimmers. I very seldom ever use carbon, only when My lux readings drop in my tank, do I use carbon. I have in general no problems with clarity. I also do not have fish in my tanks with my coral. Ialso as a rule do not use carbon in my customers tanks unless visually clarity is a problem. :twocents:
 
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looks like you are recieving alot of good advice, i personally use a aquac remora pro for a small tank I have and it works pretty good as the only filtration, but it would help to know what your goal is for your tank to better recommend equipment. what corals would you like to be able to keep? as for the deaths you are having I doubt it is related to nitrates. 20ppm or even 40ppm shouldnt be killing what you are losing. there actually is a point where you can have to little nitrate in a tank, but your standard test kits arnt even that accurate really, 20 and 40 isnt a good thing, but there are alot of successful reef tanks out there that maintain a 20ppm nitrate level. all that to say you may need to be looking for other issues as wellsuch as salinity or copper or something? what are your parameters?
 
Thank's Ironman, I decided to keep the canister based on everyone's great advice. I purchased an Octopus BH-100F hob skimmer to help with water quality. I tested KH & Phosphate for the first time and found those numbers to be slightly off, could be the reason I had the invert die-off. I am going to keep the tank running AS-IS with the new skimmer for the next few months without adding anything but some "replacement" crabs to let things settle down. I am also switching to a new salt mix from the LFS.

I appreciate everyones advice, again, this place is full of such wonderful knowledge.
 
great to hear you got some equipment, and sounds like you are willing to be patient which is vital to success! If you get a chance please post what tests you are checking and what results you are getting, I would be interested to know things like salinity, amonia, nitrite, PH, temperature at it coldest part of the day and at its hotest.
 
Ironman,

Just tested today, PH 8.2 / Salinity 35 / Ammonia 0 / Trite 0 / Trate 20 / 77 min 80 max.

I just came back from vacation in Chattanooga. I went to a LFS there that was great, 5th day creations. The guy I met there was from Gainsville and he had tremendous knowledge. You guys have some GREAT corals up there. The stuff in that store is NEVER found in South Florida.....people down here buy it instantly when it hits the stores!

Take it easy.
 

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