Reef Sock Troubles

[poolkeeper1]

This is the same thing i do, unless there is a reason to polish the water. I Thought that if you ran a sock it would harm your pod population, is that true?

My Fuge is after the filter socks and has no effect on their population numbers getting up to the tank from my return area. Also Pods in your tank that may get washed into the socks are at very best small numbers IMO
Also there are times that i run my tank without them just because i get tired of changing them out, But do go back to them most of the time and even with them my skimmer still pulls tons of Sludge from my water. My socks get the larger pieces of uneaten food and the skimmer gets the dissolved organics in the water that the socks can not. JMO
Bill

 

[gmoney243]

So basically what I am concluding from what I've read here is that if I DONT run with the socks, I may have more pod reproduction and more algae growth? Is that why you say you use an algae scrubber? I already use a scrapper every few days, and I did seem to have a larger pod population a few months ago. I may try running without them for a bit, or since I have 2, maybe just run 1 at a time.

no an algae scrubber is a filtration method where u grow lots of algae on screen to filter the water basically i use it instead of a skimmer and biopellets. and as bill said pod reproduction isnt affected by the socks pods spawn by the millions daily litteraly and mostly live in your rocks that u dont see. if your worried about not having enough pods try shinning a flashlight inside ur tank at night and see how many pods go running off looks like cockroaches. the reason i dont use socks is because as my water drains from my tank it runs directly onto my screen to be scrubbed and a filter sock dont fit long screen lol. i could if i wanted and if i do another tankill probably use filter socks and just use a dedicated pump for my scrubber since my sump does get some detritus build up. but i just syphon it out once a month with WCs.

 

[u1tranova]

lol. Algae scrubber...I was way off! Yea I do have a lot of pods that only wanna come out at night. Even with my socks running, I always have to syphon out excess detritus build up in the sump when I do WCs every 2 weeks. Im just going to keep running socks for now, get extra pair and clean the old ones. I might experiment running without them at a later time. Everything has been doing really well with the current setup, so I dont want to change just yet.