canister filtres?
 

I have a few of my tanks with canister filtres and am toying with the idea of taking out all of the sponges, and miscellaneous media in the different trays and filling the trays with coral and rock fragments to act as the filtre.
I am looking at this cuz I am still struggling with high Nitrates.
Rumour is the sponges are a major cause of this.
Looking for some advice and opinions
thanks in advance
Neal

Ditch all your mechanical and bio media. Don't bother with LR in the canister if you have any in your main tanks. Waste of time.

People do this all the time. It's an surefire fix to longterm nitrate problems.

so what should I have in my filtres? or should I even use them?

Carbon works well but I agree with Albert 100% on the sponges and rubble.
You can also just leave them empty and only use for circulation.

You're probably better off getting rid of the canisters and switching to Phosban reactors or something.

hmmmm
 

Would he be better off to just use a pump, rather than a canister?
Where would his mechancial filtration come from?


Unless it was bare bottom then you could just suck the debris out weekly?

What are your thoughts?

I can probably ditch most of the filters in most of tanks.
However, My SH tank would concern because I don't have much flow in there because, well, the SH's dont' do well in lots of movement.
So with minimum movement, the LR won't really be able to do its job.
The canister filtre at least create some movement and gets out some stuff
Any suggestions?

Mechanical filtration is only good in the form of micron filter socks. Short of that, you're best to just avoid it and siphon off detritus as it accumulates.

I don't have any mechanical filtration in any of my tanks. The water is AWESOME. No floaties.

Easy, Phosban reactor and heavy skimming. Bing bang boom.

Easy, Phosban reactor and heavy skimming. Bing bang boom.


any suggestion on name brands for skimmers? I am looking to upgrade on a few of my tanks and wanted to get some opinions on what I should look at for a reasonablly priced skimmer