filter design. pls advise!

[planetg]

I've got a small tank which i would choose to do a filtration system for my soon-to-be 160 litres tank (35 gallons?)

 

I've attached the design. pls help me and how tall should my baffles be if the height of the tank is 11 1/2"?

 

Will my design work?

 

Appreciate any comments.

[tinyreef]

looks good to me. i would only suggest a reverse flow on the bio-balls section. instead of forcing the water to crash down in such a small area have a tube bubble upwards. that way in case of clogging you don't end up with a overflow mess!

 

or you can just enlarge that 2" to around 4" and shorten the return area.

[Caesar]

If you’re going to use LR then why have any bio-balls. My understanding is that bio-balls prevent LR from having as much bacteria on it. You should get rid of the bio-balls IMO.

[tinyreef]

the bio-balls would limit bacteria on the LR just as more LR would limit the present amount of LR (i.e. surface area available).

 

bio-balls are fine to use, as is plastic toy soldiers, plastic jacks or large crushed coral. the key is to supply surface area and low-flow (anoxic) areas for the denitrating bacteria.

 

the amount of bacteria will be determined by the bio-load available to be processed from each system in order to support it.

[planetg]

if i remove my bio balls section and only use sand bed and live rock, will that be better?

 

how many pieces of live rock should i put?

 

how tall should my baffles be?

 

thanx

[tinyreef]

i'd still keep something in that area so that the splash isn't so violent, if you don't extend the pipe all the way down. if you do extend it all the way down i'd still have something there to break up the bubbling that's coming out of the downdraft (unless it's fed by a pump, which i wouldn't recommend due to flooding or draining issues).

 

if it's a solid baffle i'd leave at least 20% clearance. if you use a tank divider or perforated baffle you can go all the way up. i like using the tank dividers as they can double for quarantine or biotope zones. i've quarantined rogue fish this way and crakeur would be able to quarantine his purple lobster problem.

 

how much LR is a subjective choice imo. whatever you can afford or fit or leave it bare (only sand and maybe macroalgae, a fake turtle grass environment)

[Palmetto]

I would trash the bio-balls- they are nitrate factories.

 

Replace them with a macroalgae like grape Caulerpa- it grow s quickly, absorbs nutrients you want to remove, breaks up the water flow without falling all apart, and does your laundry.

 

I would also borrow some size from the sump/pump area and add it to the display area.

[mxpro32]

caulerpa is from the devil. there was grape caulerpa in my girlfriends tank for about a month and a half. the whole time the water had this slime on the surface and then one day the whole tank turned solid green and killed her clownfish. her tank is just fine without the caulerpa now and i would never put it back in.

[printerdown01]

I agree with tiny... Keep the bio-balls.. It is my opinion that just as the real ocean utilizes shorelines for aerobic resperation we should have a similar method in our home aquariums. I agree that bio-balls are somewhat like "factories" but then again, like factories they need raw material (ammonia). Ammonia is toxic to the aqarium, so why complain so much about a "natural way" to get rid of it... -ok, I'll get off the soap box before I can't shut up about the issue. But, macroalgae will NOT eat ammonia... If you use the bio-balls and they do for whatever reason produce an excess amount of nitrates (I have run wet dry on my nano for over a year, and have seen NO evidence of this) you will have an entire sump full of VERY happy algae, and a HUGE pod population, with little to no ammonia in the tank (sounds good to me). Anyway, your sump design looks like it will work quite well! A side note, if you run a surface skimmer you may actually see higher nitrates (or a happy fuge in your case) when running the bio-balls... nitrates are not toxic they only encourage algae growth (including coralline and all of the symbiotic algaes in your corals).

[reiple]

i'd set up a plenum there. I do in my setup. instead of just sand and live rocks try a 2" plenum space and around 4-6" aragonite sand. And where the bioballs were try using small cured live rock or porous coral rocks (cleaned broken down corals). You'd see lots of small pods thriving there soon. Don't put anything on top of the sand.

 

Check out your zero-amonium/nitrite/nitrate system after say 2-3 weeks with this! (mine is).

[Palmetto]

Let me explain:

 

Excess nutrients in a system will lead to a rise in Ammonia and in Nitrites, both of which are poisonous to our organisms.

 

The Macroalgae will consume these excess nutrients, much like a skimmer removes much of them. This stops ammonia before it becomes ammonia!

 

Nitrites are converted to nitrates by bacteria that forms on the surface of bio-balls or on/in Live Rock. The main problem with bio-balls is that the nitrates quickly re-enter the water column, where in Live rock denitrification can take place because there are anoxic areas in the rock that different forms of denitrifying bacteria exist. This is why we have learned that bio-balls actually keep the live rock from taking better care of our systems for us.

 

This is also why nitrates will build up much more quickly in a system with bio-balls vs. a system that is run using Live Rock for biological filtration. The macroalgae helps us to circumvent the toxic processes before they take place.