excess detritus in AP24?

C

catTV

My Aquapod24g, my first saltwater tank, has been doing nicely since September with 3 small fish (coral beauty, percula and clown goby), the usual cleanup crew, plus a good-sized brittle star, and a number of soft and LPS corals. It seems to me there is too much detritus settling on my live rock. With a syringe, I can blow quite a bit of fine debris off the rocks that then clouds the water for about an hour before settling out. I think I feed pretty sparingly - no water quality problems

I don't use any mechanical filtration, other than what's caught by a small bag of activated charcoal in the overflow chamber that i refresh every couple of weeks. After reading up I decided the sponges were nitrate factories and decided to do without. The overflow has LR rubble in it instead of the stock sponges, bio-balls and ceramic rings..

I was thinking of adding a Maxi-Jet 600 or 900 for additional circulation, but I already run at 80 degrees with a Maxi-Jet 900 in place of the stock pump. Any opinions?
 
Sounds like you need more flow in your tank. Consider some of the small dc powere pumps such as the ones from fraggle reef. They use DC power packs and only about 4watts. Check the group buys forum for more details.

I use two small rio 600's which are dc powered to keep my current flow up and heat low currently.

Severum
 
You could always split up your flow with a Y right off the wall.. Thats what i I had to do in my 12 gal dx.. I had the same problem.. But I went to a maxi 1200.. And I don't need any additional sources of flow.. Just an idea..
 
Thanks for the thoughts. The Fraggle pump looks like it would do the trick.

I had an MJ1200 at one point with a Hydor Flo, but it blasted the sand too much, so I swapped for a 900. Then the Hydor wouldn't stay on, so now I'm back to the stock "Y" diverter. That and a 1200 might have been about right. I'll look around.

jim
 
Before I broke my AP24 down for my big tank I would use the sponges. They caught a lot of the stuff that floated in the water especially when I used the turkey baster to "clean up" from time to time. I just made sure that I rinsed them weekly when I did my water changes. Took 5-10 minutes tops.
 
Also watch how you adjust the panels on the intake side. I have had issues with my 24g AP because the pump didn't seem to have enough pull to draw stuff into the chambers, so stuff just circled the tank and then fell back to the rock. My set up now is different because I added a CPR Aquafuge. So the pump on the left side was pulling and then the pump from the fuge was pulling but both differentl directions. So I cut a piece of acrylic to block the center opening so the fuge pump pulls from the tank into the right section and into the fuge and the Aquapod pump pulls from the left section only where the water empties from the fuge.

Although I hadn't tried this you might consider putting a small pump into the right section with hose attached and slip the hose through the center opening on the bottom so it helps pull more water from the main tank. I keep a small piece of bonded filter pad to catch debris & a bag of charcoal there.
 
I ended up putting the Hydor Flo back on the main inlet with a spot of glue and added a Koralia Nano on the opposite side, because its power consumption was so low I figured it wouldn't add any new heat. I think it's working well. It stirred up some detritus for a while but the rock looks cleaner and several of the corals, especially a big mushroom coral and a Kenya tree, seemed to respond well.
 
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