Ok, I have a little six gallon nano. I wanted a minimal amount of things hanging on or in the tank. I figured the best way to have this was with a canister filter, so I bought one of those zoomed nano cans. Now I am reading that many people say they are a waste of time in a reef tank and cause more trouble than good. Is that true?
Fisher12 has a softie tank that runs exclusively off of a canister filter and is one of the best looking and healthiest softie tanks I've seen. He can chime in and tell you more about it Welcome to Razorback Reef
Thanks, just saw people talking about it being a bad place for detritus to build up, but I kind of thought that was the purpose of a filter, as long as it gets cleaned out. By the way Im the guy that was asking you about getting a sun coral at the meeting saturday.
Oh, cool! A sun coral would be good in a little tank like that, easy to get to and easy to feed! Let Norman chime in and tell you more about that system, he can answer your questions about that it better than I can.
I believe a canister filter has it's place in this hobby, but it is not designed for things like sps dominated tanks. In my opinion a canister works well for systems like fish only or predator tanks where a great amount of waste can be produced and filtered out quickly. When I had my 440gal fish only tank set up I used a large swimming pool filter filled with aragonite sand and backwashed it regularly. Just use it the way it's intended and there should be no problem. Also in a softie dominated tank where the water parameters are not so critical. It is true if left for a considerable time without changing it can be a nutrient problem and leach back into the system. I would be glad to talk to anyone about canisters, just give me a call.
The tank came stocked with a small internal corner filter. I do have SPS and LPS (too much probably) would I be better of simply using the internal filter? The canister does not have any biological filtration. I took the ceramic balls out and just filled it with polyfill and chemipure? Its a small tank but I am planning on getting one a little bigger, just around 15 or 20. My thought was, I was buying a filter I could use in the future with the larger tank. The canister will be cleaned out once a week along with my water change, but I don't want to have something thats more trouble than its worth. Is it just overkill?
I run one of those zoomed turtle canister filters on my half gallon tank and like it a lot. I have noticed the detritus build up in the bottom of the filter but that was only once and I didn't clean it out for 4 months... Other than that I give it a few thumbs up.
A canister used like a sediment filter and changed often could do no harm. You can never get too much filtration. Just don't let it go too long between changes. That would be similar to using a sump with filter socks.
It seems like a good choice when you don't want a ugly box hanging off the back of ur tank. But I honestly don't know what the best choice is, it seems like they get a bad rep more from people being lazy than from poor design. I had not thought of it before but what's the difference between it and a sump.
I would consider a sump a high flow area that contains most of your equipment such as filter socks, skimmer, various probes,and your return pump. A canister could be used as mentioned before as a sediment filter, carbon or other medium such as phosphate remover, etc if used on a temporary basis. You would want to change any carbon or other medium at no longer than a couple weeks. Other people may not agree with the time, but I believe it's a safe length of time. A sump should not be confused with a refugium, which is a low flow area housing sugar fine sand, macro algae, and possibly some live rock for the purpose of nutrient removal and pod production. They should be 2 separate systems.
This is getting a little off subject but is it bad to run carbon continually in your filter? I may be doing this all wrong. As far as the can and sump I was referring to mechanically aren't they operating in the same way.
There has been some research done that links continuous use of carbon and head and lateral line erosion in fish. Most people recommend short term usage because it is also believed to release phosphates into the water as well. A canister filter is a good way to put filtration on a system when you have limited space and/or do not want a hang on overflow box or hang on the back filter. There are risks with using hang on overflows like the siphon breaking and overflowing the tank. A sump is a nice place to hide things like heaters skimmers probes and reactors. You can add filter socks to your drains into the sump to achieve mechanical filtration.
I have purigen and chemipure elite in my tank all the time without any problems for over a year. I change the cpe out every 3 months and the purigen every 6.
