both when i ran my 33 sumpless and in my newer system if i stired up to much crap i just put foam over the powerhead intakes. I would take the foam from an AC HOB filter and cut a slit in it so it fits over the strainer part that comes with most powerheads, when it looked full<dirty> jsut pop it off, wash it and put it back on. I also ran the AC300 with just carbon on or with an attempt at a fuge for a while, but would slip the foam on the intake for it when nessisary.

If you want an HOB filter, I would suggest you consider is the Magnum 350 by Marineland. There are two versions I believe, one is an HOB the other sits on the floor with hoses to and from the aquarium. The reason I like this filter is that you can run it as an external filter and then use it as a diatom filter and polish your water once in a while. Just clean it well afterwards and use it again as your external filter.

Doug

The tank was established (with a hair algae problem which is now well under control) when I got it from another Canreefer and it's been at my place about 2.5 months now.

I just received a new light last night along with a pre-filter box for the remora. However, I found a Bubble Magus skimmer that looked like it could do a better job a lot more quietly so i went and bought that. I tried installing it last night but it won't fit in the tank until I re-aquascape :-(

When I install it, I'll try putting a surface skimmer attachement on it and see how well that works.

Hmm, too bad about the need to rearrange stuff for the new skimmer. This Bubble Magus sits inside the display? Like I mentioned previously, I was glad to put my DIY skimmer back into service, but did a few mods to it as well. It came with the used system I purchased when I started out and as far as I could tell the previous owner hadn't used it much, if at all. The lady could not give me too many details as to how to set it up, other than that I needed to put a piece of foam in the skimmer box, which I haven't done to this day. It's designed to hang on the tank, but I ended up building a separate stand for it. This required rotating it 90 degr from the way it would normally hang on the rim and necessitated re-plumbing of the intake & output feeds to make it work. The tank is too close to the wall for this thing to fit on the back glass so having it on the separate stand gives me more room to work. The advantage of the Remora was that it actually fit between the tank & the wall.

Here are a couple of photos. I've recently acquired a larger air pump, so the bubble production has increased substantially. The photo of the powerhead in the skimmer box is new, the skimmer photo was taken a while back and the collection cup had just been cleaned. The mods I made to the skimmer include adding the ball valve to regulate the water column height in the skimmer body, a T-fitting at the bottom to drain it without having to remove it from the tank, a drain for the collection cup (goes to a large plastic pop bottle), a slip union to enable length adjustment of output plumbing and an acrylic manifold to attach two wooden air diffusers (vice a single one).

http://hlj1yw.blu.livefilestore.com/.../P1010815d.jpg

Two compartments in the skimmer box. One for the pump and a smaller one for the return

http://hlj1yw.blu.livefilestore.com/.../P1030317a.JPG