Skimmer location in AIO

[MattReefer40]

Hello, I’m new to the saltwater reefing world. I have a Fluval 13.5g I’ve had it up and running now for about 7 months now. I ordered a IOAOI nano skimmer a few days ago. I was wondering which column I should put it in, and what I should put in the other column. Right now I’m running floss and chemi-pure, along with ceramic in the overflow column. And the second column has pads, purigen, and rowa phos. And obviously my third column has ATO, return pump and heater. Just curious what I cans do away with and what I should keep when I ad the skimmet

 

[tlatix]

Middle

 

[Reef.]

I would agree middle probably better…you could remove the ceramic media not needed, you could add a little carbon to the rowa which saves space and also helps the rowa from clumping up as much, so the purigen is not needed (keep it if you have room) and the chem pure is not needed if you are using carbon.

If mine, I would have floss in the first chamber, skimmer in the 2nd and the rest in the 3rd if it all fits, you may need to add some items to the 2nd chamber if all wont fit in the 3rd…my reasoning is, the floss gets rid of the majority of the detritus, then moves to the skimmer which gets rid of the smaller bits, with the carbon etc in the 3rd to be left to just deal with the cleaned water, this also helps keep the carbon rowa etc media bags clean so the material doesn't gets clogged up making the media less effective and also requires less cleaning and doesn’t starts storing nutrients instead of removing them.

Keep in mine, most of the equipment we use is to help reduce expensive and time consuming water changes, with a nano tank a water change is very easy and not expensive so keep the tank as simple as possible, makes cleaning a lot easier…I have no prove of this but extra equipment and media in the tank probably adds more issues then they solve, collects detritus, and makes us less likely to keep on top of cleaning.

I’ve removed my bag of purigen, as I was also using carbon, when I would rinse the bag of purigen, the amount of detritus it collected made me think that it was probably adding more nutrients than it was removing.

 

[ScottJ]

FWIW, the skimmer makes for that tank, Fluval PS2, fits in the 1st chamber. Mechanical and chemical in the 2nd.

I have run the same tank for about 6 years with an InTank media basket in 1st chamber (floss on top, Chemipure Blue below) heater in 2nd, return and ato in 3rd.