Something to polish the water?

chiqui bb

Reefing newb
I'm looking for something to use sporadically to polish my water. I purchased a Marineland hang-on-tank canister filter and it worked great but also put alot of micro bubbles in my tank. Spoke to both the retailer and Marineland support and after several tweaks, still had micro bubbles. Long story short, I returned it for a full refund.

Anyone have a suggestion for a piece of equipment that will work (minus the air bubbles). I am restricted to something that hangs on the tank and will need to accommodate a 90 gal.
 
Im assuming your asking about a protein skimmer to "polish" your water. if so do you have a sump? or are you looking for a hang on back style skimmer?

if its hang on back I reccomend this Deltec External Protein Skimmer MCE Series its a bit on the expensive side but i can tell you for hang on back skimmers this one works extremely well. i have used one for the last 3 years and i love it.
 
I have a protein skimmer but it doesn't remove the larger particulates in the water. I don't have a sump so it does need to be hang on.
 
Good old carbon and floss can help polish the water. But if by 'polish' you mean make your water look absolutely crystal clear --you may not want that. The plethora of filter feeders in your tank depend on all those small particulates floating around in your water. I've always had some tiny visible particulates in my water and after 2 and a half years of my tank I still have healthy filter feeders all over that place. We find some new invert, filter-feeding species all the time in my tank.
 
If you want a cheap and easy way out, you can by a regular hob filter and turn it into a fuge. The macro or chaeto will help to catch the larger particles and let the smaller ones pass through. Plus it will help remove bad nutrients from the water.
 
Hmmm...didn't think about the filter feeders. I just purchased a new piece of LR and it has lots of good stuff on it. There is a colony of feather dusters, some vermitid snails, lots of little anemones (I think ball) and something that I can't identify. I have been meaning to post pics and ask for id help. I'll work on that over the weekend. Maybe I should leave well enough alone so these little guys can eat.
 
Nope, no problems at all. The only downside is that it was like $140 or something. Kinda pricey for something you hardly ever use! But I bought it when I had to treat my tank for flatworms, so I wanted something that I could run carbon in for a while that would be reliable and move a lot of water.
 
I must be missing something or I'm doing something wrong. Whenever my water gets a little mucked up from over-feeding or whatever I just take some filter pad cut it up and slide it into the baffles of my sump. Within a few hrs the water is crystal clear, I'll generally leave it there for a day or two and remove it.

I wonder if there's some way you could modify it to accomodate a HOB.
 
I agree with the plan of carbon plus floss. By floss I mean Polyfilter pads. You can buy a ton of it at Walmart for like 3$/
 
I'm with Sen on this one.I never run any kind of mechanical filtration either because all the little filter feeders in my tank.
But I also dont think it'd hurt anything to run a canister every so often.But I'd fill it with carbon.
 
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