Do I need a media basket for my 29g biocube?

[polancoeddie1]

I was wondering if I needed a media basket? My biocube has been running for about 3 weeks now. Can I just stack them up without the media basket? I have a filter floss with carbon in it on top of the overflow bracket. Under that I have a purigen bag. And under that I have chemi pure elite. I do have some bioball in the their at the bottom. Not sure if I should take them out. A lot of people say to take them out but my lfs has a biocube running with no problem with them..

[Silvergryphon]

Bioballs are fine if you're doing FOWLR, but if you want corals you'll probably want to yank them as they can be nitrate factories.

[RA]

Bioballs are fine if you're doing FOWLR, but if you want corals you'll probably want to yank them as they can be nitrate factories.

+1 on that. Also filter floss is just another thing to cause your nitrates to go high. I think your lfs just wants to sell you whatever they can. Just keep it simple. Do you have a protein skimmer? Just keep up with your water changes and skip all the other crap that your lfs wants to sell you.

[polancoeddie1]

How do you have your filter setup? If filter floss creates nitrate then how do you filter out big left out food, big debris, ect. ?