Canister media

[underthestars]

I have a 9 gal nano and I'm using only LR and sand as my permanent filtration. I don't want to disturb the sand bed by siphoning, so I've decided to use a small Eheim canister once a week for an hour, when I do water changes.

Between my two powerheads and a turkey baster, I should have no trouble removing the detritus using floss in the filter. Since I'm using the canister, I thought I would ask for opinions on what everyone thinks would be a good media for removing nitrates, phosphates, etc.

Thanks, Michael

 

[hud3339]

I personally would add some matrix.

 

[dakota9]

you're only running the canister for one hour a week, i'd assume to help clean the water column of debris and flotsam. i do not think any chemical or biological filtration is going to help you, only mechanical media such as a polishing cloth added to the floss is going to help.

you should rethink the 'not disturbing the sand bed idea', as in a tank that size, the sand should be shallow enough not to be detrimental to the tank if disturbed.

you need a way to run carbon permanently.

i'd recommend a hang on back filter

 

[db366]

Dakota9;750626 wrote: you're only running the canister for one hour a week, i'd assume to help clean the water column of debris and flotsam. i do not think any chemical or biological filtration is going to help you, only mechanical media such as a polishing cloth added to the floss is going to help.

you should rethink the 'not disturbing the sand bed idea', as in a tank that size, the sand should be shallow enough not to be detrimental to the tank if disturbed.

you need a way to run carbon permanently.

i'd recommend a hang on back filter

Why would you need to run Carbon permanently?

I would suggest running Purigen, Phosguard, and Carbon. Whether you run it all the time or just sometimes is up to you and your husbandry practices. I only run mine when I am stretching out the time between water changes.

 

[dakota9]

i was in a hurry and therefore worded that statement poorly.......

the op will not benefit from running any media for an hour a week... if the op wants to run media, the op needs to run it regularly, what ever the means.

i personally run matrix, carbon and purigen in my HOB filter, the only filter on my tank..... and i run it 24/7

 

[underthestars]

The purpose of running a canister for an hour or two each week is simply to act as a mechanical filter, replacing what siphoning would normally be used to accomplish. My thought was simply that if I could get the added benefit of removing some chemical waste at the same time, why not. I'm not doing this to replace water changes. It is being done as part of a water change. Not sure why doing it for an hour or two wouldn't accomplish anything. It will certainly absorb / remove something and since this is the primary purpose, it seemed to be better than nothing.

Thanks for the responses.

Edit: Sorry, meant to say "isn't the primary purpose."

 

[dakota9]

I've decided to use a small Eheim canister once a week for an hour, when I do water changes.


i do not think an hour a week would really benefit you.

 

[rdnelson]

I tend to agree with Dakota. In my estimation a canister will not remove any chemical waste if only run for one hour per week. I can see it filtering out any large particulate matter which I believe is why Dakota recommended filter floss or something similar. That would be the only advantage I would see (and that assumes that the larger particles are suspended int he water column and that they get close enough to the suction to enter the canister loop.)

 

[dakota9]

since this isn't the primary purpose, it seemed to be better than nothing.

Better than nothing is far from optimum;


I guess what I'm saying is that you need something in that size tank to meet the primary purpose of chemical and mechanical filtration, which right now, you don't have. Every healthy small system has all three means of filtration. Larger tanks can do with just the two out of the three, but small tanks benefit greatly from biological, mechanical and chemical filtration.

I think an uncluttered look of a filter-less small set up is awesome, but really not a long term, healthy system, especially if you're not going to vacuum the sand of detritus.

 

[underthestars]

I appreciate your input and I don't want to sound argumentative, but since you are offering advice outside the scope of my question, I'd like to clarify a couple things for others that may want to try a similar approach.

First, there are many people that have been very successful using a minimalistic approach with nano tanks. Although, many people have the throw as much equipment and chemicals at it as you can approach, the challenge of trying to make it work without that, is what I find appealing. By the way, there's nothing wrong with the equipment and additives, but like I said, using as little of that as possible, for a nano, is what I want to do. It is neither unique nor groundbreaking, as it has been done before.

Since I wasn't asking about the viability of my approach, I left some things out of the original post. I am using about an 1 1/2" of Fuji Pink so it is not a DSB and therefor, I don't have to worry about "disturbing" it for that reason. Although it is still fairly new, my sand bed is already populated with snails, worms, mini-stars, etc. and it is that beneficial life that I don't want to disturb, much less remove with siphoning. They do a fine job of stirring the sand. With the finer sand, the detritus stays on top for the most part and is very easy for me to suck off the surface or blow it into the water column with a turkey baster where it is kept in suspension by the powerheads until I can remove it or the Eheim sucks it out, as it will be doing in the future. Removing the detritus is the whole point of using the canister, as I said in the original post. I certainly didn't think I was going to turn on a canister and walk away for an hour having it do all the work.

The last thing that I think you are missing, although I might be proven wrong in the end, is that I have 9 gal of water that will be passing through the media many times in an hour or two. It probably wouldn't make a dent if it was a 150 gal tank, but I can't believe water that is already in pretty good shape, won't get some benefit from this weekly treatment. It has to at least be worth the cost of the media, since I'm running the filter anyway.

Having said that, if someone out there has actually tried this approach on a tank my size and found it had no impact on the water chemistry, I would appreciate hearing from you.

With regard to my original question, it sounds like the Seachem products are well thought of. If anyone has others they like, I'd love to hear about them as well.

Michael

 

[shanepike]

How do you remove the detritus now? My filterless 11.6g nano is working great so far, but I wasn't expecting so much particulate matter in the water. I don't want to get rid of all of it (as I presume much of it is beneficial in some way), but it would be nice to get the water just a little more cleaned up.

 

[underthestars]

ShanePike;750825 wrote: How do you remove the detritus now?

I use tubing that is just a little larger than airline tubing. That way if I get a little sand, it doesn't clog up the tubing. Fortunately, because I have fine sand and strong flow, everything drifts across the sand and tends to pile up in a back corner. Holding the tube just above the surface, the detritus lifts right off and is gone quickly. The problem with this approach is taking care of what's on the rock. The turkey baster does a good job of putting it in suspension, but it's a little hard trying to capture each piece before I have removed the one gal that I'm changing. That's where the canister will come in handy. When I'm done cleaning, I'll dump what's in the canister, remove more water for a total of 1 gal and replace it with new.

For my part, I don't worry about removing too much, because I figure no matter how good a job I do, I will never get it all. The only good it does is provide food for the CUC and pods, but the downside is a buildup of nitrates that I don't want. No matter how efficient our CUC is, there will always be some waste that is not rendered totally inert. Since my 9 gal tank could never replicate the efficiency of the ocean, I figure it's best to get it out of there.