What to do with canister filter now?

Ok, so I think that I have got the new sump under my 55 FOWLR running pretty smoothly, and I also believe that the new livestock have pretty well acclimated to the tank. (Details: http://www.3reef.com/threads/somebody-gave-us-a-free-tank-wonder-how-much-this-will-cost.155381/ if interested)
So I went ahead and decided to clean out the fluval 305 that came with the tank. No idea how long since the last cleaning, but suspect it was a while ago. I pulled the foam filters and the old nitrate remover pacs from the second tray, rinsed the gunk out of the GAC in the bottom tray, put the top tray full of ceramic media back in as is and plugged it back into the system. But, the question becomes, What to do with it from here on? I don't really think I need a basket full of ceramic media, but I could see a place to put some phosban or something from time to time coming in handy. Or would I be better off taking all the guts out and working out some kind of filter over the output line and feed tube so I could just run loose media in the whole container? I can always just just run it empty for some extra flow in the DT.

What would you do with one if you had a spare?

Thanks

 

Great move on getting a sump. Do you have a skimmer? How much live rock and sand?

 

"What would you do with one if you had a spare?"

Turn it into a flower pot. JMO, but canisters are too messy and require cleaning too frequently for me.

If you're bent on using it, any of the aforementioned ideas would work; maintenance will be of utmost importance as trapped detritus breaks down and dumps DOCs back into your tank, hence the nickname "nitrate factory".

 

Yep, your ideas would work,

or,

you could do what I did,

and sell it on CL!

 

Thanks for the replies guys. I am getting close to 50 lbs of LR in the DT with another 7 or so of crumble and pieces in the fuge. Adding new pieces as we find stuff we like. The tank came with about an inch of mystery sand and black media in the bottom, and I have not messed with it except to do a surface vac yet. Trying to change things a little at a time. First got the sump in, then get the fuge populated, add some more LR and macro algae (cheato and frond so far) then clean out the canister, then maybe look at doing something about the sand in the dt. Not sure if the last one is worth the trouble though.

As for the canister, having removed the filter pads, I was thinking that it would function more like a reactor than a canister filter. The flow is adjustable even though I can't see the results. Main question is do I keep the trays and keep the media separate, or try to make the whole canister open and run loose media? Seems a bit counterproductive to sell it then turn around and build a reactor.

Theoretically, the LR and macroalgae in the sump should cycle up to balance the bioload eventually, but being able to give it a little help for whatever happens to be going on at the moment seems like a good idea.

I was originally keeping the canister as found to inoculate the newly added LR and maintain what bio filtration was going on, at the cost of continuing to add some nitrates for a while, but recent reading makes me doubt this was effective.

The next project is going to be some sort of DIY skimmer, but need to work up a design that fits in my (preconfigured) sump and save for a pump.

Let me know what you think

 

You could use it to run carbon or pouches of purigen. Honestly though I don't it's worth the time to mess with. It will never work properly like a true reactor and anything you put into a reactor to get fluidized you always want to keep an eye on to make sure it's working properly.