Life Guard Aquatics AIO tank, what to put in what chamber?

[MoshJosh]

Yesterday I went to the LFS and bought the “biggest” tank I could afford. . . a 24 gallon AIO. . . Still not big enough but definitely an upgrade to my 15 gallon.

anyway, does anyone have this tank? How are you running the filtration?

It comes with a big sponge and some bio balls, should I just run it like it is in the picture? Water comes through the overflow, goes down, back up through the sponge, down through the bio balls, then back into the tank?

alternatively I could make a platform to hold filter floss in the first chamber and skip the foam???

where would you put the heater?

I have an Eshopps nano skimmer that should fit about the bio balls.

 

[thomas_neil]

Yesterday I went to the LFS and bought the “biggest” tank I could afford. . . a 24 gallon AIO. . . Still not big enough but definitely an upgrade to my 15 gallon.

anyway, does anyone have this tank? How are you running the filtration?

It comes with a big sponge and some bio balls, should I just run it like it is in the picture? Water comes through the overflow, goes down, back up through the sponge, down through the bio balls, then back into the tank?

alternatively I could make a platform to hold filter floss in the first chamber and skip the foam???

where would you put the heater?

I have an Eshopps nano skimmer that should fit about the bio balls.

I don't have that exact tank but my rear chamber is pretty similar.
I have mine set up as follows.
First chamber top to bottom. Coarse sponge that comes with tank, filter floss/Carbon bag, fine sponge to hold floss in place.
The second chamber I have my heater and bio bricks - I don't like the bio balls that come with the tanks.
The 3rd chamber I have open with just a fine sponge at the bottom, trying to decide if I want to run a skimmer.
The 4 chamber is the return pump and my ato sensor.

 

[MoshJosh]

Thanks for the reply, I have sort of decided to just run a sump. I wont be drilling the tank (in case I want to go back to an AIO set up later), rather I plan to put an Eshopps external overflow in the first chamber. I will still run the tank as an AIO, but cycling about 150 gallons per hour through a sump/refugium. . .