I'm in the middle of building and adding my 1st sump ever to my 40B and have been debating the whole mechanical filtration idea. After reading this thread along with this post from Randy on another thread, I've decided against it. I do however like to take a turkey baster and wreck havoc on my sandbed before I do my water changes which stirs up a ton of particulates. So I will probably add something on water change day to help catch some of that.
With all the advancements in both our techniques and the equipment that we use, I'm noticing a new trend of issues with people stripping their tanks a little bit too much and ending up having to dose nitrate and phosphate. I'm no genius but instead of dosing nitrate and phosphate why don't we just leave a little bit in there???
With all the advancements in both our techniques and the equipment that we use, I'm noticing a new trend of issues with people stripping their tanks a little bit too much and ending up having to dose nitrate and phosphate. I'm no genius but instead of dosing nitrate and phosphate why don't we just leave a little bit in there???
You are correct that I never tried to remove detritus or particulates aside from running a skimmer, and a thick layer collected in my sump and refugia.
IMO, it may have been what prevented my tank from ever going ULNS despite massive organic carbon dosing.
IMO, unless ULNS is a goal, I'm not sure detritus removal is anything more than an aesthetic requirement.
In my system, the refugia had plenty of very low flow locations where detritus could easily settle so it wasn't a visual problem in the main tank water column, or even settling on the main tank bottom.
That said, I never tried particulate filtration on my tank (except in, say, GAC and GFO "reactors"), so I cannot really say how the tank would have been different if I did so.