Live Rock and Sand as Bio Filtration?

[jstoehr]

I have heard about this and am very confused. I have a Eheim Plus Canister filter. It comes with media for Mechanical, Bio and Chemical. Should I just fill this up with Mechanical and Chemial media and let the LR and Sand do the bio. I have a 30 gallon tank. 46 LBS of LR and 30 LBS of LS. Is this enough for bio in this tank. How many fish or inverts would I be able to keep in the tank with this setup?

[reef-man_d-man]

sounds like a good amount of lr/ls, maybe a bit more ls. You should be able to keep pretty many inverts and 3-5 small to medium fish nothing to big (tangs angels etc.)

[Lucunae]

You have plenty of live rock. How much sand depends on what your trying to achieve with it. Usually a DSB is at least 4in deep. If it was my tank, id use about 2in on sand as 4in will take away alot of space in a small tank. I would not use the canister and get a good proetin skimmer and some powerheads. As far as livestock goes, id put in a few snails, a small shrimp or 2, and 2 small fish, but im still pretty new to this also:cool:

good luck,
B

[WaterKeeper]

jstoehr,

You should be fine using the LR and LS for the biofiltration. It is preferred over using mechanically assisted biofiltration media, which is sometimes associated with elevated nitrate levels. You want to consider deepening your sand base to at least 4" if it is not that deep.

With a small tank you need to limit you fish in both size and numbers. Consider a couple of damsels and perhaps a dwarf angel. The is no fast rule on the number of corals you can keep. What you need to do is find those that match the light intensity you can provide and that those that are not antagonistic to their tank mates in close proximity.

[DgenR8]

Use your canister for running carbon when necessary, and leave the mechanical filtration out of the mix. A good mix of snails will do all the mechanical filtering necessary, and your live rock and live sand will do the rest.