Filtration questions from newbie! thanks in advance

I don't know if I would qualify monthly cleaning as "often", but it's all relative and subject to personal opinion. On my freshwater sump the return tubing collected just as much gunk and needs to clean regularly. What I didn't like about it is the constantly worrying about keeping the siphon going and the overflowing of the sump with water all over my floor. I've come home many days to a pump gurgling for who knows how long because evaporation in the sump. I can't tell you how many times I've got nasty fish water in my mouth trying restart the siphon *yuck*! If I missed a daily top offs these problems were sure to follow. Without your own RO/DI system this would some you will be something you have worry about. You will need have a decent supply of fresh water.

 

my skimmer has an extra chamber for this sort of thing.

 

IMO that only had experienance with a Marineland C-360 canister on a 55gal is this. You need about 30 minutes for maintance/cleaning. Also the media (carbon/polishing pads and filter pads) can be expensive. I do live how quiet the canister is as well as the safetly. You should never come home to water all over your floor. I have a koralia 4 near my return and this helps with flow. Make sure you have good water pressure if you get a canister filter thought they have been know to put bubbles in your tank.

 

We should be sure to use proper terminology. I'm not sure what your idea of a "sump" is. A canister filter is mechanical filter with chemical filtration. You can add several media. You force water through the media and it is good at what it does.

A sump is not a filter. It is a sump. A place for you to circulate water to so you can put equipment. Good place for a skimmer and heater. Good place to put carbon, though a reactor is much better than just floating a bag. A canister is much better for carbon and other chemical filtration. The return pump provides good circulation.

A wet/dry filter is a filter. Providing mechanical and biological filtration and most provide room for equipment. Bio balls are not evil despite many that claim they are. However, if you remove the bio balls from a W/D, then all you have is a sump with a place to put some filter floss. You can have a place for chemical filtration, but again, a canister filter is going to do a better job at it than just running water over something.

Any type of filter media will be colonized by bacteria. If you do not do regular maintenance with the filters, you turn them into biological filters. That isn't a bad thing by itself, but when you do get around to doing your maintenance and changing the media, then you just wiped out a large part of you bacteria. I changed my filter floss weekly in my W/D when I had it. Canister filters are good at circulating water through media, but the media need to be maintained regularly to keep the bacteria in your system and not the canister.

 

Well put, but I do have a small difference of a opinion on the technicality of what services these pieces of equipment can provide. A canister can be combination of or just mechanical, biological and chemical filtration. I've seen in my LFS sumps that they sell that have a large filter sock right where the water comes in. The guys at the store says you can take it off and run it fine, but I would call that a form of mechanical filtration available on a sump.

 

Sure, you can run filter socks in a sump. You can add a lot of stuff to a sump, but a sump by itself is just a container. Heck, I got a carbon reactor to run my carbon in my sump. In actuality, I added a canister filter to my sump.

I thought about running socks cause I really like clear water, but I really hate filter maintenance. Now with my fuge, aggressive mechanical filtration is sort of defeating the purpose.