ZaphodBB
New Member
I have a 90 Gallon setup a few months now. Have had a few challenges, but overall has been fairly smooth so far. One of the mistakes I made was not rinsing the sand before adding it.
Typically I imagine it'd settle out, but I have a Engineer Goby who is constantly turning the sand (which is great). Issue is the dust from the sand never fully settles because I don't have much for mechanical filtration. Intent was to handle all the bio filtration via liverock and perhaps get a macro reactor if that was insufficient down the line.
But now I find myself looking at mechanical filtration options to help filter out the fine sand. I'm temporarily using an old fluval in-tank mechanical filter/power head that I used on a 30 gallon back in college, but it's not really doing the trick. Flow is low... It's an old undersized (for this tank) pump that I think should be retired.
Tank isn't drilled.
Few options:
& Full Tank shot tax
Typically I imagine it'd settle out, but I have a Engineer Goby who is constantly turning the sand (which is great). Issue is the dust from the sand never fully settles because I don't have much for mechanical filtration. Intent was to handle all the bio filtration via liverock and perhaps get a macro reactor if that was insufficient down the line.
But now I find myself looking at mechanical filtration options to help filter out the fine sand. I'm temporarily using an old fluval in-tank mechanical filter/power head that I used on a 30 gallon back in college, but it's not really doing the trick. Flow is low... It's an old undersized (for this tank) pump that I think should be retired.
Tank isn't drilled.
Few options:
- Get an overflow and setup a sump with a filter sock.
- Opens up alot of options for expansion in the future, but I was hoping to avoid HOB overflows due to noise concerns.
- Concern is only #" of clearance between back of tank and wall. Initially was trying to prevent cats from getting behind stand but I see now I've limited by HOB options considerably. ReefLife super slim is the only one I found tht will definitely fit at needing 2" of clearance. Eshopps slim *might* just barely fit, but I doubt it.
- Get a canister filter. I use HOB filters for my freshwater tanks, and the pre-filter makes maintenance a heck of alot easier, hoping the same would apply for the canister. Intent would be to use a prefilter and also a fine filter within the canister to handle mechanical filtration, & just fill the rest with live rock rubble to act as a dark refugium.
- If there's one thing canister filters excel at, it's mechanical filtration.
- Get an in-tank mechanical filter. Eyeing up the comline Tunze one. Would likely pair well with the comline skimmer if I decided to get that down the road as well?
- Just put different media in the temporary filter I have? I'm using a fairly large pored sponge at the moment, but tried scour pads and while they collected a fair bit of dust, didn't make a noticeable difference in the tank water.
- & of course any other options. Looking for folks opinions on the above or any other ideas.
- 90 gal
- 65 lbs dry rock from LFS (Sourced from decommissioned tanks, looks to be the good stuff you'd see years ago in the hobby)
- 5 lbs live rock from LFS (got a polyclad worm hitchhiker... got ride of it though!)
- AI Blade Grow 39"
- Maxspect Gyre as the primary flow.
- Temporary Fluval in-tank mechanical filter
- Engineer Goby
- Blue Eyed Kole Tang
- Yellow Striped Cardinal Fish
- Blue Green Chromis
- Coral Banded Shrimp
- 4 Margarita snails (LFS gave them to me by mistake when I asked for Ceriths....)
- Corals
- Clove polyps
- Zoanthids
- Red Mushrooms (free on the live rock)
- Torch Coral (I was going to wait longer to add any LPS, but wicked deal on it)
& Full Tank shot tax
