How many of you have a wet/dry?

[AquAsylum]

So we are trying again with the corals and now water quality needs to be perfect instead of just good enough for the fish...Our nitrates have always hovered around 20 and I need to figure out how to get them down. I wasn't good with water changes, but have done 10% every week for three weeks and in fact this week did about 25%.

We have a wet/dry filter. I know there are varying opinions on them, but that doesn't keep people from having them. So I'm wondering how many of you have one on your reef tank and for those who do, whether or not you rinse the bioballs as part of your maintenance routine.

(we also have a lot of live rock and a fuge with LOTS of chaeto. I actually need to harvest the cheato, but since our fish live with ich I don't want to be responsible for giving it to someone else. too bad, because it's great chaeto full of worms and brittle stars and pods)

thanks...

[NYer]

Get rid of the bioballs they will be the source of your problems..

I use a sump 40 gallon empty tank and I filled it with 20 lbs or so of rock rubble and a bunch of Chaeto algae.
My $0.02

[Ah64av8tor]

I would have to say get rid of the Bioballs!

[coyoteseven]

Replace the bioballs with some pieces of LR rubble.

[Agu]

Fan of rubble here too. Skip the semi submerged part and only have the rubble fully submerged. otherwise you're just paying for live rock bio balls.

Toss the chaeto in a bucket with an airstone/powerhead and harvest the pods to add back to your tank. You're in Florida, the bucket will do fine in your garage or lanai. After 6 weeks the ick dies off.

[inaspin]

So if you get rid of the balls do you still use a filter pad?

[Ah64av8tor]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9865511#post9865511 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by inaspin
So if you get rid of the balls do you still use a filter pad?

Im a big fan of filter socks, but just like the filterpad on your wet dry the pad must be changed every day or every other day max.

If you are going to keep a reef with low nitrates you need to keep the biological filtration contained in the Deep Sand Bed or Live rock where de-nitrification can take place other wise you are just dumping nitrates into the water column.

[AquAsylum]

It's so nice how everyone on the local board agrees on things. Thanks for the opinions.

[Paul B]

My reef ran for years with a wet dry. My nitrates were also about 20. I removed the wet dry and they went down to near zero. The problem with a wet dry is that it works too well and too fast.
If you could have enough rock to eliminate the nitrates as fast as the wet dry makes them you would have a perfect tank, unfortunately you would need a massive amount of live rock because the aerobic bacteria found in a wet dry are very efficient.
It is still a good filter for a fish only especially a tank with large carnivores like eels, lions, triggers etc.
Paul

[myakkareef]

Not only the Locals but Paul also, thats a huge plus for removing the Bio balls. I run a filter pad about once a month for a day or two just to polish the water. Other then that it's chaeto, live rock, Skimmer and Carbon..
Laura hopefully you can make it back to some meetings in the future, have not seen you all for awhile...

[AquAsylum]

I know- I wanted to go last weekend but we were in the tank all day. Hopefully I'll be able to host at some point :)

I'd pull the wet/dry out tonight if I could- I have some convincing to do as the other half is attached to it and thinks I read too much on websites (just kidding, B)

Scott- it's still your chaeto that has done so well. We could fill a 10 gallon tank with the dense mat action we have going on right now!

[SoundsFishy2me2]

Hi Laura. It's been a few weeks since your post. I'm courious on how everything is doing since you removed the bio-balls in the tank.

-- Did the Nitrates come down?

-- Did you start adding the corals again? (BTW: Greg's (Ah64av8tor) got some really nice frags and other corals avail. from what I've seen.)

[AquAsylum]

Hey...I took half of them out right after that initial post and the rest of it is coming out this weekend. My last test showed nitrates at about 15 instead of 40. Nitrate testing is tougher than I remembered- it is pretty hard to tell the difference between 20 and 50. I now have a salifert and seachem test and use them both to compare.

I just started asking everyone I talked to about the wet/dry while my husband was around and enough people completely railed on them that he decided it "might" be a good idea to get rid of it. :) I think the kicker was when Chris at AA said we could get MORE fish if we took it out- B has been wanting some anthias, so that made his day.

Yeah, we've gone coral crazy. Everything is doing really well so far. (and Greg hooked me up with some great frags in exchange for the urchins) I'm a zoo fiend, apparently.