I have been keeping fish for years, with many tanks, and I have tried elaborate setups, that will work great, but there always seems to be alot of tinkering, cleaning, maintenance etc., and I almost like the tinkering, sometimes, but I also have a very busy life that doesn't allow me alot of time to tinker with stuff, so I have simplified things, and found #1 UGF's rock! for unplanted gravel tanks. #2 Growing plants in SOIL with a layer of fine sand to trap it rocks! #3 Using House plants to filter water rocks! and #4 Polishing your water through Foam rubber rocks! (although high maintenance) I've tried algae scrubbers with success, but you have to polish the water with foam rubber filter, and clean the screen every 7 days, Canister filters work successfully, but cleaning them often is a pia, and then sumps work well, but the space, equipment, setup, plumbing, cleaning, etc. all PIA! I get it that this is a hobby, and detailed maintenance is fun to some, but sometimes I think all the water changes, and problems arising from screwing with stuff all the time is ridiculous. I see w/c in almost every post, and I think you are just trying to for lack of a betterterm "throw water at it" instead of letting things work the way God intended it. For example, the detrius at the bottom of the tank gets sucked into the gravel to feed the bacteria in the gravel. vacuuming the gravel will starve the colony, thus shrinking it, so the only reason I vacuum the gravel is to break it up so that water can flow thru it easier, otherwise it turns into a solid chunk of concrete! Other than that, the nitrates are eaten up by the houseplant in the hob filter, like plants beside a river would do. All problems are best solved by The Master Engineer GOD.