Also important to planning, and unique to reefing:
If you install that canister, and run it empty with no media in it where it's just a big water pump, there's no loss of stability to your main reef-in fact there's a gain.
Reefing is opposite of freshwater care in interesting ways, filtration is one
Chemistry is one among many: in reefing, nitrite is neutral to the point we don't ever need to know it's measure, even for cycling if a reef display. Not owning the kit as a reefer saves you money. Ammonia is what burns animals in reefing, cycling is aimed at establishing ammonia control for the animals in the reef tank.
In freshwater, it's opposite unless we're talking cichlid tanks of high ph (both ammonia and nitrite can burn)
For typical home community fw setups and especially planted tanks, nitrite is a serious risk and ammonia isn't much risk at all. Inverted concerns
In freshwater, we deal with slick surfaces, polished round rocks usually unless it's the fancier aquascapes. Plant leaves are high surface area but they're slick compared to knurled real reef rock so in freshwater we're trained to pack as much media in a filter as possible, to support the slicks in the biosystem that really are lower surface area than even a tiny chunk of quality live rock.
Reefs by design overdo live rock surface area in the display: that's why an empty filter doesn't matter. There's three times the needed surface area for a high fish load, in every reef on this board.
A filter packed in media selects for billions of bacteria that require oxygen and produce gas+ added acid waste. That's a tax on the tank. Yes, they clear ammonia too: but your corals wanted it for food recent studies show. Reefs will tolerate canisters, pros use them for water movement and they do use them for targeted uptake of certain things like nitrate or po4
So during a power outage while you're away, after just short time in the stilled, locked canister the colony crashes due to no oxygen. When power comes on, you pump goo back into the reef that may have easily survived the wait were it not for the goo pump installed because we had never discussed opposites between freshwater and saltwater
your best bet in reefing is knowing what's required, what's a liability hidden, since everything is backwards on this side. The canister is ok to run but the money is misallocated for reefing, it would be better spent on true real coralline live rock from the pet store. Or two strong powerhead pumps instead.
Last pondering of the effects of packed canister filters on reef tanks:
if someone connects *6* heavily- packed canister filters, along the back wall, of any common 100 gallon reef tank and runs them a year, all science knows by that time they'll be fully 100% cycled and linked into the system
Linked how though
Optional, or linked requisite meaning the system dies without them
Optional link is the answer. In that same tank, we can uninstall all six huge packed canister filters immediately without any ramp down time and nothing happens.
They're neutral impact in reefing as helpful ammonia control, neither installing them nor removing them changed the fact the display had three times the amount of rocks we need in it.
Just like we can drive down the highway with four wheels, or, we could go triple-dually with 3x wheels and tires at each hub and STILL easily drive down the highway (but now at the expense of gas mileage, engine tranny wear, linkage wear etc)
There's tradeoffs in carrying functional but excessive wheels and tires on a car
There's tradeoffs, risks, with farming ten trillion more bacteria beyond what your tank needed to run the most fish you could fit in the tank anyway. Think about that angle as you buy reef things.
B
