Hardware - Did I Get Bad Advice ?

[nilocmal]

been looking around here for a week or so and am a little concerned...

got a juwel rio 240 (50g'ish) 3 years ago and was happilly tropical until last summer when i finally took the plunge and went marine.

went to lfs, who promptly sold me a prizm hang on skimmer, an eheim external filter loaded with biological substrate, and more tropic marin salt than i know what to do with.

i asked about the built in juwel filter - they said to keep it as you can't have enough biological filtration, but to loose the fine blue sponges.

did all that, added some mollies to kick start the eheim, then 20kg of live rock a few weeks later.

got rid of the mollies, added some damsels, then some soft corals, then a six stripe, and so on.

tank looks great. water tests great. etc.

but, i think i'm left with a setup whereby the juwel is doing a bit of biological filtration, the eheim some more, and the live rock some more too. seems to me like having the live rock convert amonia to nitrogen in one fell swoop is infinately preferable to the whole amonia >> nitrite >> nitrate >> nitrogen thing.

but, where do i go from here ?

if i loose the eheim i'll get an amonia spike, ditto the juwel.

i'd really like to loose the whole juwel black box as it's rather ugly, but am worried about killing everything with the subsequent amonia spike. i guess i could use the eheim as a mechanical filter by changing the substrate, but have the same concerns about amonia.

any idea's people ? n1z i see you have the same tank as me. what did you do ?

cheers
colin.

 

[Betta5]

can i just say never buy a tank like jewel, i made the mistake . Dont get me wrong they are good tanks. but have a high price. for a 120l tank it cost me £210. For a 72"x18"x18" its costing me under £180. i have a worktop stand for it to go on. But the lids are cheap to.

I would take 1 sopnge out every 2 weeks maby and when there are no sopnges remove the box. I would keep the powrehead on the system tho (more flow).

How is your skimmer working i have herd bad things about the brand?

sorry about the lack of info im new to saltwater.

 

[nilocmal]

the skimmer's doing great. i empty it maybe once per week - full of green thick gloopy gunk.

thanks for your idea re sponges. will give it a go.

 

[SkiFletch]

If you have enough LR in there, I would think that you could remove the juwel internal without too much trouble. How much LR do you have.

 

[nilocmal]

20kg

 

[SkiFletch]

For a tank that size, should be plenty. I'd remove the filter from the tank and put it in a heated bucket with tankwater. If you do see an ammonia spike, put it back in

 

[nilocmal]

ummm, heated bucket ?

 

[nilocmal]

oh i see, take the sponges out, put them in a bucket of tank water and chuck a heater in, right ?

 

[SkiFletch]

Yeah