DIY chaeto HOB

[JessKaye]

Has anyone made their own HOB chaeto refugium? I’m running a freshwater-converted 200L tank with a canister and looking for more nitrate export. (Will hopefully one day upgrade to sumped system but we I don’t quite have the funds for this yet). Cheers!

 

[mcarroll]

If possible I would try not to have that to worry about...that way you can focus more on tank fundamentls (vs filtration maintenance).

Can you do more to decrease nutrients held within the system? Canister filters don't usually get cleaned very often so they can become unwanted nitrate sources. If you're doing mechanical filtration with it, this is almost certainly happening.

Does the tank have a full compliment of live rock? Are you running a protein skimmer? Do you have anything else in place for cleaning/filtering the tank?

 

[JessKaye]

If possible I would try not to have that to worry about...that way you can focus more on tank fundamentls (vs filtration maintenance).

Can you do more to decrease nutrients held within the system? Canister filters don't usually get cleaned very often so they can become unwanted nitrate sources. If you're doing mechanical filtration with it, this is almost certainly happening.

Does the tank have a full compliment of live rock? Are you running a protein skimmer? Do you have anything else in place for cleaning/filtering the tank?

Thanks for your reply! I very much appreciate it
- the tank is very lightly stocked with fish at the moment but I feel might have been overfed so I’m dropping back on the amount being fed.
- I’m not currently running a skimmer but I was contemplating a HOB skimmer if this might help
- I’ve been cleaning the canister monthly (which I have to admit is just based on my freshwater maintenance but perhaps I’ll increase it to weekly- there never seems to be much in it)
- the canister currently has a mix of bio media and filtration sponge. I’ve seen conflicting views on whether you should put just live rock rubble vs just biomedia vs sponge and happy to change this up if it would help
- it was mainly a dry rock system set up with about 3kg of live rock added in
- there’s nothing else in place for filtration but again happy to hear suggestions :) As I said I would have loved to start with a sump but it just wasn’t feasible at the time, definitely on the wish list!!