Can live rock live in a canister?

Ok, don't make fun of me guys but I have a dumb question. I have had my 30 gallon reef setup for over two years now and its doing awesome! But when I first built the tank and the stand I didn't know what I was doing. I was a freshwater keeper and had two fluval canister filters laying around so I thought, heck that's enough filtration for a 100 gallon tank, why not put it on a 30! Anyways I drilled the tank in the middle (dumb mistake) so I cant run a sump now unless I want some ugly PVC set up in my tank. So I want to get rid of the sponge filters in the canister because they really do me no good and wanted to know if I can put live rock in them and have it survive? I don't really need it because all my params always stay perfect with my weekly water changes, but I figured more live rock could never hurt! ;D

 

I am lost on the drilling issue - a pic might help.

Live rock in a canister? Sure, just replace 20% of your old media every couple of weeks until you swap it all out. I think a few people on this forum use live rock in a canister -

 

Im 100% certain you dont want them sponges in there
you dont need to bio capacity and they are more difficult to clean than some filter pads are IME.

not 100% convinced on the more live rock being needed now or in the future to be honest.

the principle is
the rock accomodates bacteria
the bacteria that you culture is relative to the nutrients you have to feed it

thus increasing the area bacteria can accomodate, but not increasing the available nutrients , means you just have rock rather than an intergral part of a bio filter

and you have rock in a device that traps debris and thus IMO , you have the potential source of a future nitrate issue , unless you empty and rinse it regular.

running those cannisters with mechanical media to help water clarity (removing solids)
and washing frequently
or running them with chemical media, carbon, GFO, Purigen, Chemi Pure, etc etc
would be better options IMO

Steve

 

yeah in my canister that I have in a 19g......... I use carbon, gfo and purigen in the filter. I have the sponge in there right now but will be removing them as they are NITRATE factories. Canisters you really need to do frequent cleaning out of the canister at least 2x a month IMO and if you overfeed then you definatly want to do almost weekly. In our tank it was a custom built acrylic nano, that has a small sump area in the back of the tank (like a nanocube) but without the baffles. I place filter floss where the water runs into the sump to catch any food/junk that flows in before it can get to the canister. We change that floss every couple days. This helps keeping the canister a little more cleaner

 

I think he is saying "the middle" like either the middle of the back of the tank or the middle bottom of the tank. So either way he would have to have 6-8 inches of pvc showing in his tank.

 

Yeah sorry I should have clarified, The holes are drilled in the back pane, at mid level in the tank so if I decided to go with a sump I would have like 8" pvc pipes sticking up from the back of the tank. Thanks for all the replies, I think I'm just going to stick with the sponge filter. I rinse them out once a month and I have also been running a carbon/organic removing pack in the canisters and it works great. The tank has been doing great for 2 years like this so I guess it would be dumb to change anything!

 

Normally I would have said:
If you use a sponge I don’t think once a month will be enough – nitrates will begin to be produced within one week. You would be better off with a filter sock since its easier to remove and clean.

But its hard to argue your statement here - I would still suggest testing the canister output for nitrates after a week, 2 weeks, 3 and the 4th week - post the results back here as to help others. What works for one might not for another .....