I have a 90 gal tank with a wet/dry for up to a 300 gal tank. The wet/dry has a built in protien skimmer, then the water drips down threw media balls into the sump, and back into the tank. I had a huge algie problem, and the tank wasnt very clean. I took out 1/2 of the media balls, and put 3 12" / 14" media bags. 2 filled with carbon, and 1 filled with a carbon,phos mix, I also added a phos. pad on top of the media bags right below the tray with the holes in it. So basically the water drips through the media bas before it reches the media balls and retuns to the sump. I also switched to a 1300 gph pump up from a 400 ghh pump. My question is will this set-up work? The water is crystal clear. Its been over 1 month now and the water is style crystal clear. I used to have to do at least 1 water change a week. Do you see any problem putting the media bags over the media balls? Also I no longer get anything in the collection cup on my protien skimmer? Is this because the water is already clean, or did I screw something up? Right now I just have ciclids in the tank, But I am going to be switching to a saltwater tank as soon as I can aford a 200+ gal tank. Will this setup work on the saltwater tank also?
wet/dry filtration problems
- Thread starter daveolejnik
- Start date
the set up is fine now but if you switch to salt water you will have to decide are you doing fish only or are you doing corals.
A lot of people remove the bio balls when they use a wet/dry for salt because they produce nitrates.
You really need to start going to salt water club meetings to learn about a salt tank before you do one.
A lot of people remove the bio balls when they use a wet/dry for salt because they produce nitrates.
You really need to start going to salt water club meetings to learn about a salt tank before you do one.
Yeah, for saltwater, I would loose the bio-balls for sure, and use live rock for bio. Bio-balls are considered nitrate traps by reef keepers. In fact, "nutrient poor" works well in most any marine tank, as most marine life kept in aquariums come from nutrient poor waters. By the way, a protein skimmer is designed for marine tanks, which is probably why it doesn't work so well on freshwater.