hahah thank goodness the feather isnt in the display, I only put it in the hob fuge just to help cycle and get rid of pesky nitrite and nitrate. its starting to send roots through my grate though :O so hopefully i can keep trimming those before the fall off into the tank :P thanks for the advice on cleaning the filter. every three days is that necessary?? I do weekly 25% water change out and I ato with fresh when I can, waiting for the float valvue to get here to make my ATO system.

if your just having live rock rubble and macro then cleaning every 3 days is a bit much , when i use to run hob's as a refugium i didnt clean it at all just blow a turkey baster in there or suck some crud out with a baster.

pods will love the dirtyness of your filter.

in a tank as small as yours you will not have any nutrient issues or parameter isuuse if you just do water changes.

rinsing your frozen food will help with phosphates if you dont plan on running a reactor.

Brilliant! thank again Denny! right now for frozen food Im feeding just prosalt - mysis shrimp not cube but flat pack and I usually desolve it in salt water before feeding

still rinse as it contains phosphates, fill a coffe mug with the shrimp and some cold freshwater(doesnt need to be salt) wait for it to defrost, pour out the juices and refill the cup with more water. keep straining out the juices and adding new water untill the water stays crystal clear.
putting the mysis on papertowel and blotching off the juices helps alot too.

if you defrost the shrimp in some water youll notice how murky the water is, you dont want that stuff in your tank its a common problem for new reefers:) cheers

you stated you have the foam block in your HOB. This is the filter that you should squeeze, rinse clean in used tank water. You want to keep the bacteria in it but not the detritus. That will only decay more and release nitrate back into the water

haha crazyness never would have thought. I dont feed large quantities of mysis as this is the only tank at the moment. Any concept on how to shrink this for a smaller size portion? haha like 5ml worth not even haha