Refugium, skimmer or standard filter

Hey all this is my first post and I hope I can learn a lot from the more experienced members. I have a 20 gallon salt water tank currently stocked with a pair of ocellaris clown and one blue devil damsel along with some snails, and hermit crabs. The tank has a 4 or 5 inch live sand bed and about 10 pounds of live rock and rest is old dead coral from my fathers old tank. I was running a simple wet dry aqueon filter with simple cartridge 200gph and it wasn't cutting it. I got a huge algae bloom it was nasty , green hair algea all over the sand etc.

I went out and upted my filter with a aquaclear 70, 3 stage hob, which doubled my filtration flow and really helped cut out the bloom. However I want to further improve my water quality....now to my question, sry if I'm being long winded.

What would be the best way to improve my tank filtration?

I was thinking of getting a small taam hob skimmer.
Or possibly turing my aquaclear 70 into a refugium and using my old aqueon as a wet dry but no skimmer.

So to narrow it down what do you thinl is best combo, standard aquaclear + skimmer, or aquaclear converted refugium + wet dry , or any other combo.

The tank right now is fish only with live sand and rock but I would like to do coals eventually. Again I'm sry for being long winded

 

Hello, and welcome.

Please, don't apologize for being long-winded. This is why we are all here...to chat, learn, share, and experience.

Is this going to be a fish-only tank, or a reef tank?

 

Sorry, I am an idiot. I guess if I had read the last sentence, I would have my answer.

I will post another response in a moment.

 

One thing that strikes me as odd here is the depth of your sandbed. Do you have the sand this deep in an effort to produce a deep sandbed?

If this will be a reef shortly, the wet-dry is not going to be a good option for you. They are actually too efficient, if that makes much sense. I can explain this further, or you might read around about wet-dry filters in reef systems.

Skimmers are always a good option. I don't know much about the model you have chosen, but, investing in a decent skimmer is always a good idea. You might read a bit about recommended skimmers for that size of a tank.

Alternatively, there are many folks who have great success in similarly sized tanks with alternative filtration types. For example, simply doing very frequent water changes has been used with success, as has growing "good" macroalgaes (many of which are quite beautiful).

Perhaps this will offer some insight, perhaps not.

 

I'm not shure if the sand bed is that deep, I'm not at home, when I got it the lfs just gave me his suggested depth for my tank dimensions, but is very varied now in depth cause my blue devil is always diging around in it especially under one piece of old coral which is like his little lair.

When you say marcoalgae are you refering to chaeto you would use in a refugium? Or other sort in the display tank , something like coralline.

Basicly I can't fit all 3 types, standard aquaclear 3 stage , skimmer and refugium on my 20 gallon.

Which 2 would you suggest, if I were to say I eventualy would like to add a few simple easy corals to start.

I was between adding a basic skimmer or no skimmer and growing some marcoalgae, in the small space of my old aqueon hob.

 

The Blue Devil can be a great fish. I have had one for many years, and she has been a wonderful, even well-mannered, fish. It's pretty resourceful of yours to be creating its own little haven, no?

As far as the algae, no, not just Chaetomorpha (this is actually horrible in a display tank, as it just makes a mess), nor just coralline. Have a look around at some websites, and for sale forums, and macroalgae threads. There are some beautiful algaes that are very suitable. They can be acquired in colors such as red, blue, purple, etcetera. Very cool stuff, and typically very inexpensive. You might pick up a "frag pack" for $20 (including shipping), which would have some very cool stuff in it. You could likely grow most of these under modest lighting too. This could add some color as you finish gathering up the reef lighting, etcetera (if you don't have it already).

Amongst the other options, arguments could be made either way. I personally would argue that a skimmer might be the best option. And quite honestly, I might even forego the other choices altogether. I might just opt for a decent skimmer (particularly if it has a sponge filter of some sort), some nice algaes, and small-but-frequent water changes.

 

So, I just typed "marine macroalgae pics" in Google. I would post some of the pictures, but would probably get arrested for copyright infringement or something. Further, some of the sites maintaining the images aren't 3reef sponsors. So, posting links is out too. But, a quick search such as mine should be informative for you.

I am betting there are even some members here with dedicated macro tanks.

I have raised quite a few macros over the years. If you ever have any questions about them, please feel free to ask. I'm not an expert, by any measure, but do know a bit.

 

The taam skimmer is good for the price and it still allows you to run a mechanical filter and carbon in its filter cartridge.I have one I used it on a 6 gallon eclipse tank.

Given your choises I would get the taam skimmer if your on a budget if not look into a acau c remora nano skimmer or tunze nano skimmer.I would also go with some of the display macros.reefcleaners.org is a great source and john,who runs it,is a great guy.he's on here so id look him up and see what he recommends for macros given your tank specs.

 

I just want to be clear here, in my professional opinion, the most likely penalty for copyright infringement is...

death

then bunga bunga

then shooting

then more death!

 

More on point,

My biggest problem when I ran smaller tanks was keeping salinity constant. I'm terrible about doing regular top offs.

I'm have become a big believer in a good skimmer and either a refugium (which can be the actual display tank as Macon suggests) or bio-pellets. I'm also a big fan of an auto top-off as I imply above. I've had great luck with the Octopus HOB and in sump (though I much prefer in sump). They're not the latest high tech things, but they work every day and thats all I ask. Don't know much about the TAAM.

I do think you need to address the sand bed before moving on. If you're looking to use a sand bed as a source of filtration, I suggest you read up a lot on how a deep sand bed works. Do some google. If this isn't your plan, I'd suck that thing right out of there and go either bare or a light coating of substrate. I've never run one, but I'm willing to believe a well maintained deep sand bed works. A medium sand bed not suited to the task is just a factory for algae feeding nitrates and phosphates however. This is a case where compromise is a terrible solution.

Lots of things work. There are more that definitively don't. Avoid the latter and experiment with the former.