prefilter placement

[bill_m3]

I have a Clear For Life tank with a wet/dry on the back. I've noticed that water flow over the drip plate is highly restricted when I put filter floss directly on the plate. The water only gets about half way across the drip plate. However, if I put the floss UNDER the drip plate, I get much greater water agitation over the drip plate. Is there a problem with having the prefilter media under the DP? The floss is actually sitting on top of the bio-balls.

 

[Len]

Hey Bill,

You can have the filter media below the plate. Just make sure to clean the plate periodically to prevent clogging.

If you're using this filter on a reef tank with live rock and sandbed, you actually don't need neither the bioballs nor the filter media. The live rock and sand provide more then enough surface area for nitrifiying (and denitrifying) bacteria to do their thing

 

[bill_m3]

Thanks Len. I didn't realize I didn't need the filter floss at all! I do plan on slowly removing the bio-balls. I bought the reef tank about 2 months ago used and the nitrates were 60+ when I first tested the water. Surprisingly the guy had it established 2-3 years like this. He told me he never cleaned the bio media and told me it was bad to do so. Well, I've slowly been cleaning the bio-balls and removing a few at a time. I've decreased the nitrates to around 15. I'm taking it slow as I don't know how many pounds of LR I have, and if will be sufficient.

At this point, I think I'll remove the floss. When I had it on the DP, it actually caused such water restriction, I had an oxygen problem. One night, I came home and all the fish were hiding. A few of them slowly came out and had lost color (almost white) and could barely swim. They wouldn't eat either. This was every fish in the tank. I thought for sure my tank had crashed. Even the hermit crabs were falling off rocks. After ensuring the water chemistry was fine, and ruled out diseases, I figure it must be the oxygen. I removed all the floss and lowered the water level to increase the dripping from the DP. I also repositioned the powerheads to distrub the surface water more. Amazingly, the next morning everything was completely back to normal. I really full lucky on that one. The importance of water turbulence is something I take serious now.

Bill