Live rock, bacteria, and filter questions?

[cirionrc]

First, tommorrow I want to go to Aquatic Warehouse and get more tonga rock. I have only about 15 lbs. I want to get about 30-40 lbs and stack it up high. Do I put other kinds of rock under the tonga or do I just stack it up. I do not know how this works because they only have smaller pieces. 2. Simple question. Does vacuuming the gravel kill off beneficial bacteria. I vacuum quite frequently and hope this will not disturb the system. 3. Ok, I have had the eheim 2217 canister filter for about 2 months now. I know there is wastes and decay in it. How often do I need to clean it out. Do I just clean the macaroni looking stuff or everything. Will the wastes in the filter cause ammonia? There is really no difference if leftover food decays in the tank or the filter. It will cause toxic ammonia, right? Oh yeah, how long does chemi pure last for? Should I replace it immediately?

[Physh1]

Okay. Sounds like you either need more filters or more circulation. Sounds like you spend a lot of time cleaning. Just my point of view. Your crushed coral substrate is not ideal. It does tend to trap dirt. You may want to consider a gradual swap to live sand.

 

You may also want to post these ?'s to the general reef board on this page of try ReefCentral.com because you will get much more results from them than in a nano tank board. Not much nano tank info correlates to bigger reef tank ideals.

 

With that said this could help......

 

1> You can just stack it up without problems. Some people use base rock (regular rock or pretty bland live rock) to keep the cost down a little. The negative to this is the lack of bacteris and organisms. Your choice but I would use all live rock.

 

2> Vaccuming will remove bacteria and some critters that came from the rock. This also removes fish waste. It's a good/bad thing. You do have a FO tank so it isn't as much of a concern than in a reef. How often are you doing this? Once a month should be enough and if you do it too much you can remove too much bacteria and get ammonia/nitrite spikes to occur.

 

3> The conister should be maintained ~every 4-6 weeks. Replace carbon if you have it and rise the sponges off in a bucket that has tank water in it. This will keep the bacteria in the sponge. It is not important to have this sponge spotless just cleaner than it came out. Overcleaning can be problematic. With good bacteria level fish waste is nuetralized before it can elevate ammonia/trite levels. If you have lots of extra food you need to cut back on the feeding amounts. Chemi pure should be replaced every 3-6 months.

 

Cameron