Filtration without Live Rock: How are you getting more with less?

[Reab]

I like the idea of the filter medias(bricks, marine pure, etc) and what they bring to the table. Not having to worry about having enough surface area for bacteria is wonderful. The only issue is that these are no where near perfect and come at a cost. They all break down and have been linked to heavy metal contamination. I have experienced this first hand myself. The marine pure raised aluminum and the brightwell raised tin. I am currently using siporax and will try out matrix next if I do not like the results I am seeing. I use a skimmer in all of my tanks and filter floss. I use a refugium when I can but it is more for pH purposes than the nutrient uptake. I really don’t think there is a perfect answer here and it all comes down to how you choose to run your reef and what steps you implement to make it successful. One of the best tanks we ever had was a 3g full mixed reef. It was a small little petco tank with no filtration, simply a heater, return pump, and light. We did a Dixie cup water change a day.

 

[NaturalBrnHeathen]

I'm new to this & maybe my opinion doesn't really count, but I'll share in case you guys have any thoughts or recommendations for me... Stocked my 75g FOWLR a little over a month ago. Since it's converted from FW to SW, I don't have the luxury of a sump. And being my learning phase, I do not want to buy HOB versions of skimmers, refugiums & such only to upgrade in a year. So reusing all that I have - a HOB emperor filter, FX4 canister & about 35lbs of dry rock cured for 2 months in a fallow tank.

My bioload is heavy - 1 sheet of nori & NLS pellets with selcon everyday. And 1 cube of mysis shrimp every other day. To help with the filtration, here's what I have
- HOB filter houses 3 bags of purigen, 1 bag of phosguard, sponge, ceramic rings & filter floss.
- The canister houses ceramic rings, bioballs, pond matrix, sponge & filter floss.
All this probably sounds like a lot, but it is not when compared to 1-2 lbs of LR per gallon of H2O.

Here's the intention with all the media
- Sponges & filter floss to catch the detritus before it breaks down
- Purigen to get the organics the floss & sponge didn't catch
- Ceramic rings & bioballs to help with the ammonia & nitrites.
- Pond matrix to break down the nitrates
- Phosguard to remove phosphates & silicates - control algae & diatoms
- 35lb dry(live??) rock - I added it cause, well... everyone says so & I'll need space to add the corals later. In time it could end up being the sole filtration in my tank, but not yet.

Observations so far
- Some green algae started in one section of the tank, but stopped after I added phosguard
- Diatom's kicked in right after I added phosguard. I thought Phosguard would remove silicates so I don't know why they showed up. Still not too bad of a diatom outbreak
- Water is still a little bit cloudy, constant bacterial bloom perhaps. I'm running an airstone to aid in oxygenation.
- Nitrates skyrocketed to 160ppm in the first 2 weeks. Two 20% water changes & some Seachem Stability later, they are at 40ppm.

Other filtration idea's I'm thinking about
- If my nitrates don't come down to 5-10 ppm, I'll add some pulsing Xenia
- If Xenia doesn't help, maybe dragons breath or other macro algae in a breeder box on the back wall of the tank.

 

[darrick001]

I have a complete natural system without any mechanical filtration. Currently running a modified triton system. I only use a carbon reactor to reduce chemical warfare. No water changes no skimmer for 4 years. 500 gal tank 210gal refugium. Only use about 30- 50% of the recommended live rock My nutrient levels are very low. One of my main export systems is plankton. The snails, crabs and starfish eat any leftover food . The pods eat anything missed along with any fish Waste. Refugium cleans up the rest. Coral eat the plankton. Feed coral and anemones 2x a week . Currently have about 20 different types of mushrooms and many different zoa's, 15 different lps, 20 + different SPS, 11 maxi mini, 7 BTA, 40-60 Rockflowers maybe more they spawned recently and haven't counted the babies yet. Oh and my out of control xeina that grows faster than I can pull it.

 

[DucatiGtr]

It’s all works.. it’s very relative to your bioload

 

[VG30DE-TT]

I keep a repetitively small reef tank, so rather than fill my 29G display with liverock I have LOTS of MarinePure and rock in my sump/ filter areas. so I voted "other" because I mostly use a synthetic porous material hidden away to house a majority of my beneficial bacteria, that I do believe is my #1 form of filtration.

 

[ca1ore]

Curious whether folks that are using all sorts of rings/blocks in their sump have actually done any testing to confirm ammonia/nitrites? In other words, using these materials because your system actually needs them as opposed to it ‘seeming’ like a good idea. Suspect I already know the answer LOL.

 

[ca1ore]

My current build will have the minimal dead rock needed just for placing corals. I had planned to get some cultured rock and livesand from Florida, but with the Canada / US border closed, that may be difficult. I only wanted the live cultured rock for the injection of life that would come with it rather than it's filtration.

My primary filtration will be a DyMico style filter built in to my sump. The sump is 8 ft long and 5 ft of it is devoted to the media bed and processing chambers of the DyMiCo.

Here is my sump standing on it's end (still at the builders). The top 3 chambers in the photo are the DyMiCo inspired filter.

Using this filter, I do not expect to need any other filtration.

Dennis

Zoinks, sump-a-saurus .... seems like a shame to fill it with sand and water. Will be most curious as to your experience with the DyMiCo filter. I must confess to a degree of skepticism with these kinds of ‘no maintenance but miraculous results’ filtration approaches (usually the brain child of Dutch reefers .... why is that I wonder) .... but I’m a cynical, disagreeable sort LOL.

 

[Dennis Cartier]

Zoinks, sump-a-saurus .... seems like a shame to fill it with sand and water. Will be most curious as to your experience with the DyMiCo filter. I must confess to a degree of skepticism with these kinds of ‘no maintenance but miraculous results’ filtration approaches (usually the brain child of Dutch reefers .... why is that I wonder) .... but I’m a cynical, disagreeable sort LOL.

Lol, you forgot the coarse gravel. That totally changes the equation right?

I have been interested in these types of filters for years. I have always wanted to try one, but as they are not forsale outside of Europe, I decided to build my own.

Their claim to fame is the no water change, no skimmer, just keep the carbon jug full, hands free operation. That is not what I am interested in though. I am mainly doing it for the ability to have plankton produced by the filter, available in the watercolumn 24x7. I think I have a pretty good understanding on how they (DyMiCo) use ORP and dosing to control their version, so I may experiment with that in my version, I doubt I will target that for my operational plan. I tend to like waterchanges for replenishing trace minerals. I find it easier to just do a water change than have to worry about dosing too little or too much trace elements. So water changes will still be used.

One usage pattern that I plan to explore, different from DyMiCo, is to see if I can use the filter to control nitrate based on the ORP it is running at. In DyMiCo's version, the ORP is used to control the carbon dosing and the water batches pushed through the filter. I plan to see if I can correlate the ORP the filter is run at to the amount of nitrate it removes and thereby be able to affect the residual nitrate level in the tank.

A good example of a tank that uses one of these is @Squamosa 's SPS tank. He built his DIY version and operated it like the DyMiCo ones, but eventually found that he could forego the carbon. Hopefully I get similar results to his.

Dennis

 

[schooncw]

My 120 is filled with live rock of all sizes and it's purpose is for filtration and because it is waay overstocked with fish-hiding places-and softies and I feed very generously. I also have a reactor with 4 liters of SeaChem denitrate at very low flow, for denitrification, a biopellet reactor, as well as a Tunze macro algae reactor. Marine Pure and Brightwell Bricks made a mess of my sump and I will never use them again.

 

[TroyClark]

4l of seachem matrix in mesh bags in my sump. I periodically take all the rock out out of the DT, bleach it, treat it and re scape. Matrix is for filtering, rock is for looking pretty lol. Plus I have a skimmer and a clear water algae scrubber.

 

[Reeflier]

I'm using an old sump (that I've used for the past 20 years with just salt fish) in my new reef setup. It has a huge bio-ball section to which I added 2 gallons of ceramic bio spheres and then filled the rest with the old fashioned (sterilized) bio-balls--I figured they couldn't hurt anything and would help to some degree biologically. I would suppose that between the rock & gravel/sand in the tank, and the bio media in the sump I'm probably about 50/50 for bio filtration.

 

[siggy]

2 bio bricks and zero organics

 

[Shmollica]

My initial thought was no, but then the more I thought about it, there's a good chance that it's doing most of the filtration. I have a filter sock and a skimmer and a refugium. But none of them are really pulling much and the fuge has slowed it's growth tremendously and my nutrients are super low.

Do you have sand? I was also thinking no because of sand lol

 

[joseph scott]

Voted other, because I also have a deep sand bed, filter sock, skimmer collecting a lot, cheatomorpha growing like crazy, I feed heavy so all my fish are happy.

 

[Radicalrob1982]

Simple question today regarding filtration. LIVE ROCK is the number one way most of us "filter" our reef tanks but the trend in aquariums these days is less is more when it comes to aquascaping. But less aquascaping means less rock and less rock means less filtration so we have to make up for it somewhere. Let's talk about it today!

1. In what ways are you filtering your water besides live rock?

2. What ways of "non-liverock" filtration have you found to be most successful?


image via @Ricardo Prata

I run a 20 long. 4 fish. I only have live rock. I use a small hob just to run gfo(chemi pure.)

Takes 3 to 4 weeks for my nitrates to rise up to warrant a water change. On the other hand my phosphates are usually enough to create film algae. Considering either more water changes or a reactor. Has anyone else had a similar experience?