Mechanical Filtration

[WillM]

I currently have a filter socks on my return line to sump, and I also run a Aquaclear 500 with the filter foam. My tank is 75G w/40G sump. It is lightly stocked with a clownfish and two damsels, and a few soft corals (2 zoa rocks, GSP, and anthelia). My skimmer is older, but German made and seems to get quite a bit of greenish brown gunk out daily (it is a Sander Ozonreactor, but I'm not running ozone on it).

I am considering pulling the filter socks and the foam block. I would replace the foam block with LR rubble and just keep the AC500 running in case I need to add activated carbon in an emergency (I have several of the 500's carbon bags stockpiled for such occasions).

Does anyone else run mech free?

How do you like it?

The main reason I am doing this is when I do my weekly water changes I clean the filter socks and foam and it clouds up the water considerably. Also, if I can not have to do it I'd rather not do it. The less moving parts the better.

[Sk8r]

Reefs run mech free, with live rock, sump/fuge [optional fuge], and skimmer. I don't filter mine at all, and I don't run carbon, either, nor ever have with this reef. A filter piles up nitrate, robs the fish of copepods and other such, (you have to evert it and shake them and crud back into your system. I'm very much not for filters, bioballs, or anything that keeps crud from your sandbed; just let it go down there, meet the bristleworms, get reduced to small particulate, and digested by the sandbed and the cleaners like nassarius snails.

[bnumair]

i agree mostly with Sk8r except for i do run carbon and i do run denitrator so i never have nitrates in my system.

[WillM]

That is what I was hoping to hear. I clean both weekly, but the filter sock especially gets a lot of greenish gunk built up in it (it sits next to my lighted refugium and I'm thinking it's algae growing on/in it), and then the water is just running out of the top of it anyway, so I figured if I could get around having to use it that would save me having to cloudy up the water un-necessarily (and washing them, ugh).

Thanks Sk8r!

[WillM]

Thanks Bnumair, I came from a FW background, so letting go of carbon and mech come hard. I recently went away for a weekend and came home to a blown fuse (based on the water temp probably the first day I was away), so two of my Tanganyikan tanks heavily stocked with Tropheus sitting for 2-3 days with no power. I always keep my apartment at 72, so the temp was low but not deadly, but the filters all had to be gutted and cleaned, huge water change, and I used major carbon to handle the rest since the bio was probably 80% dead at that point... It was a lifesaver.

So, I always keep carbon around although I don't run it all the time. I would, but I know I would wind up forgetting to change it on some tank and I would worry about it leaching stuff back into the water, so I just use as needed.

[sporto0]

Now here's another point of view, mechanical filtering is mechanical filtering, regardless of FW or SW, they do a great job of filtering floating debris like they were designed to do, I see no difference of letting it collect on your sand bed or in your foam block which takes 10 seconds to rinse out once a week. They will not nor can not produce anymore nitrates than the bio-load put upon them, nitrates come from nitrites which start with ammonia, filters do not produce ammonia. I do not use bio-media in mine thus allowing my live rock to handle the biological filtration. They are also an excellent place for chemical filtration when needed & create surface agitation which is a positive scenario for any home aquarium, fresh or salt.