Please tell me th guy atthe fish store is wrong ? canister owners please read

[j007dreamer]

Spoke to someone at the Fish store and was told that a canister filter will not work on a saltwater tank ??

I got a canister filter fluval 405 and im setting up a FO tank.

He said that every time i clean the filter it will recycle the tank and EVERYTHING WILL DIE !!!!!!!!!!

Is this True ???

[Danfish]

While I'm not experienced nor have ever used a canister I think its totaly wrong.
Most of your cycle bacteria will be in your sandbed and live rock.
So unless you have little of those, you should be ok.
But I'm new too and don't know too much of anything about canisters.

[WaterKeeper]

Well, if you clean it with garage floor cleaner and don't rinse it it will. :D

Nonsense, you don't want to use a cannister as a biological filter. That is not good in SW. However, for running carbon, chemical absorption media and just polishing the water they are great. It just so happens that I am (once again) discussing this in The Filtration Thread (http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=707105)

[Iphis]

Canisters can work perfectly fine on saltwater tanks, but there are some things you need to be aware of.

You need to make sure you clean it twice a month. On the first time, just do a water change. A week or so later, really scrub down the media you have in there.

Often times, what happens is that the media within the canister can become whats referred to as a "nitrate factory" and it can cause serious problems in your tank. By staggering out the cleaning like I mentioned earlier, it will be much less of a shock to your system.

There is nothing wrong with a canister, you just have to know how to maintenance it.

Iphis

[AquaReeferMan]

Yeah we use a fluval at work on our seahorse tank. So right there shows you it can work. Like any filter you just need to keep up on the cleaning part.

[Sk8r]

He's a very little right. Here's the deal.
Modern reef tanks rely on the Berlin method: live aragonite sand, live rock, high circulation flow of water, and usually a sump, where you have a skimmer (some skimmers just hang on the back of the tank.) Another addition may be a refugium, an area of macroalgae and light where copepods may reproduce to help feed the fish. In this system, the live rock and sand have bacteria and inverts to break down fish poo into food for corals, etc. The skimmer removes amino acids that may survive this process. Fish and corals alike thrive.

Here's the catch: no filtration. Filter media tend to set up bacterial colonies in competition for the 'food'/poo and actually reduce the food for the live rock and sand, thus lowering its strength and effectiveness. The owner then changes out the filter media and washes his filter---bingo! a lot of uncycled fish poo hits the live rock and sand, which doesn't have enough living bacteria to handle the load, and an ammonia spike and nitrate spike result, harming fish and corals. The live rock and sand bacteria reproduce furiously trying to catch up---and bingo! the cannister filter media now starts competing with them again and stealing most of the food before it gets there.
The events repeat endlessly: the tank is unstable, constantly swinging between too many and too few bacteria, and ammonia and nitrate spikes that harm the fish and lead to unhealthful conditions in the tank.

So your lfs is right in principle: if you're keeping a reef, you should rely on your live sand and rock alone, using a cannister ONLY to pull out a sudden mess of particulate, like chopped up algae, etc. Then the cannister filter should be shut down and taken out of the system. That way your tank takes care of itself, and does so without cleaning or fuss, on a very stable basis.

You also operate a reef tank with the top completely open: you have one horse of a pump in that sump to hoist the flow up to the display tank, and that and your high lights breed heat: the evaporation rate means cooling of that heat.
THAT means you need to top off your tank constantly with fresh ro/di [highly filtered] water to prevent salt buildup [and your pump running out of water]. That's where you use an auto topoff device.

NOW...a FOWLR tank is fish-only with live rock, ie, it uses the berliner principles, but has only fish.

An FO tank is fish-only with some other kind of filtration system, which does not actually cycle [build up sufficient bacteria to handle the fish]. It uses a cannister or wet-dry system that relies on biologic process building up in the filter pads. And then it is yanked periodically---a wise owner has several pads in there and only pulls one at a time, never all at once. It is a less stable kind of system, inherently, because there is a little nitrate/ammonia bounce in the system, but not a big one, with careful management. It is an old-fashioned way of doing things, but it still works. It can also be run with a top, lower light, and lower flow, and still have fish live and be healthy.

Personally, having run both kinds myself, I'm delighted with the berliner system and like having the corals and the fish together, because I like watching them go through the aquascape of colored sticks and blowing tentacles. But it's a question of what your goals are for your tank and what you want to keep.

So your guy is right and wrong, depending on what you want to do. He's right to caution you, but it is possible to have just the cannister, too, with fish and rock alone.

[j007dreamer]

Wow thank you .... He had me really scared there. thought i was going to have to return it.

I have to say im new and im sure you all have seen my many post on here asking question (u have all been very helpful thank you ) im not to sure how to set up the canister yet but for him to say that it would kill everything the first time i cleaned it cause of a recycle i thought was kinda of harsh. But what do i know

[j007dreamer]

thank you for all the replys... so in your opinion will i be ok with this equipment. in a 45 gallon fish only tank

The canister filter fluval 405 - Remora 1200 skimmer - deep live sand bed - 20lbs base rock - 20lbs live rock

the above post made me wonder if running the Canister all the time is a good idea, Is that something i should only turn on every once and a while ???? and mostly leave things up to the sand rock and skimmer?

[Sk8r]

First thing you have to figure is just what kind of tank you want to keep, what fish, how many, what their needs are and what you want their landscape to be, with what kind of lighting and general environment. Once you know that, you can proceed down that path with some confidence you know what your equipment needs are, how to house and feed your critters, and what they'll need in terms of space.

WHen planning, consider the ADULT size of the fish you're getting and, using a ruler if you have to, figure how they're going to look in that tank. Most online fish sources (including the ads that sell them) give the adult size and what they eat. [making sure it's not each other! ;) ] Foster and Smith, one of the RC sponsors, even has a very useful compatibility guide that will warn you off bad matches (lionfish, for instance, with small delicious fish) and special issues (mandarins eat only copepods, with few exceptions). Plus they may show you fish you might never have known existed.

HTH---and good luck!

[bertoni]

You could use the canister filter to run activated carbon and provide more flow. They are convenient for that.

[Sk8r]

Again, all depending on goals. If you've got the sump and a pump to drive it, you can use your live rock exclusively, and go ahead and let your tank cycle and become a FOWLR tank, then plug your cannister in on a second pump to 'polish' your water when something's gotten kicked up: there are all sorts of plumbing choices here. Personally, I like having the cannister to plug in at need, and then rely on my live rock and sand most of the time. In a 45, you're pretty close to the size I have, which is a flexible sort of tank---you can keep a couple of medium fishes, or a group of smaller ones---you can do interesting rock arrangements to let the little fish dive in and out, or do an arrangement that gives larger fish 'territory' and defines this and that side of the tank ; lots of choices there, including the possibilty of a few zoos and mushrooms, even with minimal lighting---given fish that don't think they're delicious. I keep sps and lps corals, the touchy ones, with a simple sump and live rock, with highpowered lighting. With a 45, you're shallow enough that you don't need awfully killer light to keep certain corals. Here's a really good time to do a lot of reading and questioning, as you're doing, and laying down some plans of what you'd like to have, and finding out if the arrangement is compatible. Copperband butterflies and tangs, for instance, munch corals. Parrots do. Gobys won't, but some burrowing gobies knock down rockwork...etc. etc. Every species has its goods and its bads, and if you keep your options open, you can acquire things slowly. When it gets to fish, I'd advise adding one at a time until you have your full house: that protects fish and tank water against a spike caused by getting all the fish at once.

[j007dreamer]

I dont want many fish i know that the tank is small (45g) only a clowen fish and porcupine puffer (maybe) most just small stuff that will live happy together nothing to crazy.

So should i only run that Canister every once in while ???????

will the tank be ok with only live rick and sand and a skimmer ?? with out the Canister on all the time ?

[j007dreamer]

I do not have any kind of Sump ?

[LiveSock]

you don't need a sump but obviously they have benefits in creating extra volume, allowing you to hide away kit and for providing a refuge away from the main tank.

you will be fine using a hang on skimmer and a canister with carbon and perhaps some phosphate absorber and / or polyfilter.

[Sk8r]

Bertoni is one of our resident experts, and his suggestion is a good one: carbon is a good thing to have in with fishes, and your plans for a reasonable number and size of fish sound good. You could use that cannister to supplement flow and give your fish a healthy exercise, so you could be running two pumps, getting the best of both systems. There are a lot of things a cannister can do, including running polyfilter, if you have any accident or worry about chemical contamination, a micron filter, if you have diatoms (not desirable stuff, those), or just the carbon---particularly if you add a few leather corals, or have an anemone ultimately for your clown. Anemones are notorious for spitting irritants into the water, and carbon removes the problem. YOu'll be glad you have that filter. Puffers are the cutest thing with fins, imho, and you should have a lot of fun with that tank---plus if anything does go wrong [your anemone just spawned and your water has turned white and opaque] and forum advice says, at 1 am local time, quick, run carbon or polyfilter, you won't have to wonder how to do that or what to do it with.

[dj synystr]

porcupine puffer can get pretty big and a 45 isnt enough swiming room for them. if your gonna do a puffer do a valintine puffer they stay the smallest i think.

[ACBlinky]

I imagine your LFS guy meant that if you clean out your biological filter media in tap water it will kill off the bacteria, causing the tank to re-cycle. That's not going to happen if you're relying on rock for your filtration and using the sponges as mechanical filtration and rinsing them regularly enough that they don't develop a population of nitrifying bacteria.
I have canisters on both my FOWLRs and like them a lot. I chose to go a different route, and let them act biologically to compliment the LR, and so far so good. I gently rinse out the sponges in SW about once a month; I don't like to disturb them too much because after a few months of use they both became home to hundreds of tiny feather dusters, Q-tip sponges and countless amphipods. I think of them as dark refugiums in a way. Neither tank has a nitrate problem (measures <5ppm in both) or issues with nusiance algae. If I find the tanks develop nitrate issues, I'll have to rethink things, but right now it's working very well.