Filtration HELP!!!!!!!

I have a 40 gal reef-in-progress and ihave a bak-pak skimmer and a boi-wheel a friend on mine has a canister filter for her 110 gal im thinking about buying if I do should I take the bio-wheel off or just leaveit on w/ the canister??

 

Jonreefy

how much rock do you have in your tank?
how much water flow do you have ( powerheads, wavemakers etc)

IMO - you dont need to add the cannister filter
and you dont need the biological capacity in the bio wheel

with good water movement and adequate rock rock, your biological filtration will occur naturally within the confines of the reef tank

you could consider adding it and running carbon, Phosphate removers, and other chemical based media in there

saltwater set ups are a lot different to freshwater set ups, where in freshwater a cannister or hang on filter to house bacteria colonies to process wastes are normally considered essential in even moderately stocked tanks

in a reef set up with enough rock, enough flow and moderate stocking, conbined with a protien skimmer, then there is no need for additional biological capacity outside of the tank IME

Steve

 

I have 30 pounds of live rock two 660 penguin powerheads, my filter cartarage is a biological type w/ a floss/carbon impreginated pad. I have really bad hair algae and i'm running a phosphate remover in my bio-wheel. What do you think?? should I go w/out the bio-wheel or what. The tank set up was pretty messed up so things are slowly straightin' out

 

Jonreefy

the Penguin 660 is rated at 170 gph and you have 2 - thus 340 gph
you have a 40 gallon tank - thus your only turning over 8.5 x water volume per hour
which IMO is not enough - I have had over 20X in a FOWLR and even with soft corals I can get away with 50 X provided its spread over more powerheads

rockwork - you want about 1.5 lb of rock per gallon - but yes this does depend on rock density , more porous rock means you get more coverage for less weight

can you post an image as we would be able to tell from looking at that if the rock seemed adequate

what are you keeping currently? as removing a biological filtration media or device needs to be done in stages , becuase a tank only houses bacteria in relation to the bio load
so in your tank, some lives on the rock, sand and other surfaces and some of it lives in the biowheel , If you just removed the biowheel, you may have an ammonia spike because you may not have enough bacteria left on the rock to deal with the waste

phosphate remover can help with the algae issue
increasing flow can help with some algae issues
feeding more carefully can also help with some algae issues

getting an image up so we can all see what we are dealing with here, would help you a great deal IMO

Steve

 

I have a yellow tail damsel and a royal gamma, a coral banded shrimp, possibly an emerald crab (he molted but i haven't seen him since) a brittle star and a couple of blue leg hermits. I also have two polyp colonies and several small mushrooms. Tell me how to post pics and iI'll throw one up. Thanks man.

 

look at the bottom of the reply window and cclick on "Advanced" the you will see a paper clip to the right of the "smiley" face on top row of the tool bar; click that go to your pic folder add it then close the window....Wala pic attached

 

your welcome Jonreefy

http://www.3reef.com/forums/reef-aquarium-articles-how-tos/how-post-pictures-3reef-69264.html

this is the best way IMHO - as you get decent sized images on the post rather than the thumb nails

you need a photobucket account, but its free
and then you save images there and as per above, copy the image code into your reply

Steve

ps Peirce Eye was posting a different method at same time - and his method also works OK IME

 

Hey man I've been trying to post pics but I dont have a computer at my house so I have to go to the library. Im working on ot.