No to Mech Filters!

[Scarfers]

Well for the longest time since I've been in this hobby I have ran two types of mechanical filters fluval 404 and emperor 400 with high end filter media and I can say this much. From personal experience all they really do is polish the water but in the end they contribute to nitrate buildup at least from my experience. Never again !!!! My nitrates have dropped like a freakin rock since dropping the mech filter and upgrading my skimmer :smile:

 

[Jzhou]

I agree with you that some mechanical filters are nitrate factories after awhile. This is especially true to most of the marineland filters with the biowheels. After awhile, they are as bad as using bioballs.

 

[Scarfers]

I agree I've been using them back in 2003 when I first started in this beautiful hobby and at the time I started college didn't have time to do further researching. I came back into this hobby early this year and learned that the mech. filter and my sea clone skimmer were the primary reasons I lost some of my fish back in the ol days

i miss my clown trigger

 

[Jzhou]

To be honest, I love using the Penguin filters for qt and hospital tanks, some of my larger freshwater tanks are also ran with the eheim 2260. The 2260 has to be one of the better power filters created because it has this valve that allows you to take out build up every week. There had been times I was tempted to just load one with rock and strap it onto my 220. Sorry to hear about your trigger though, those guys have a pretty amusing personality.

 

[Scarfers]

yea they are considered to be the smartest fish in the ocean

 

[noelskii]

mechanical filters are mainly used for trapping detritus and need to be cleaned out or changed often to avoid nitrate build up. what do you have in your fluval? you say you have media in there, if so, then you're using it more than just a "mechanical filtration" and probably not cleaning as often. mechanical filtration is nothing more than a simple filter sock or a poly pad...

 

[TRIGGERMAN]

If you keep up w/ the maintenance on the filter it will work very well if you don't then of course you will have nitrate issues just like if you don't bathe you will smell..common sense.

 

[rookie07]

If you keep up w/ the maintenance on the filter it will work very well if you don't then of course you will have nitrate issues just like if you don't bathe you will smell..common sense.

But if you dont shower, you can use deoderant/perfume to cover smell thus delaying the need for a shower (this is a metaphor keep in mind), much like a skimmer can delay the need for maintenance bc it helps maintain water quality

 

[TRIGGERMAN]

Not really..you can't compare taking a shower to spraying cologne the same way you can't compare running a skimmer to delaying maintenance. A skimmer only helps a little bit most of the filtration is in your rock so that basically does all the work . I have tried running my tanks with a skimmer and skimmerless and there is really no difference. I have been skimmerless for about 4 months and all my corals have never looked better.

 

[Jzhou]

If there is a major difference having a good quality skimmer and having a mediocre or even crappy skimmer in running a reef tank, how can you say it has little to do with filtration?

 

[Scarfers]

from my 8 years of experience in this hobby ( not with corals ) I had been keeping up with maint. on the fluval and emperor and eventually and quickly might I add they do accumulate detritus buildup and result in nitrates going up

the media I used were chemi pure, some pads and ceramic pellets for ammonia/nitrite breakdown

I literally kept up with maint every 1-2 weeks on them and since I removed them I noticed a dramatic reduction in nitrates

as far as skimmers go all I can say is they help maintain your nitrates at their levels because anything that's broken down from extra food on the sand to fish waste is picked up by the skimmer that isn't by your rock it all really depends on the individual on how much rock he or she has but I think a skimmer is detrimental to a healthy system unless you're running something like an algae scrubber