Aquaclear 20 Media

[nano_reef_ubergeek]

I wanted to add something in this thread about Chemi-Pure .... I have the 5 oz. chemi-pure elite and I want to warn people that the bag does not really work well with the aquaclear 20 --- the flow is greatly reduced and if you turn it up all the way, it is mostly overflow. I had to go out and buy a bigger filter use this media. You should probably have an aquaclear 30 or larger -- I bought an aquaclear 50 from someone who took down a big tank. (the directions say not to open the bag).

The other thing I want to say about it is that mushroom coral never looked worse than on the first few days I've been using this media -- now maybe this is just an adjustment period of some kind and I know that many people are very happy with it. I now wish that I'd just been happy with my activated carbon and not gone down this path. One reason I started down this path was fear about phosphate build up and uneaten food in the tank -- my clown goby would taste food and spit it out -- . The truth is that the phosphates have to be pretty high in the tank to be a danger to fish. High phosphate levels are a concern to people because of algae growth.

(I will keep people updated about this)

 

[waterdrop]

And again I think its important to remind our beginners that this is a freshwater beginner forum and the tank described above is a saltwater tank.

Expensive chemicals should not be necessary in a properly maintained freshwater tank. A filtration system of sufficient size that contains mechanical and biological media and is combined with weekly water changes of 25 to 50% done with substrate cleaning will go forward with minimal replacement media for many years. Fine mechanical media such as floss or floss pads may need to be changed regularly but sponges and ceramics can last a really long time. Sponges will eventually tear and need replacement in an incremental fashion and eventual rotation of a few ceramics often occurs when biomedia is donated to help start a different biofilter.

Having a chemical media like carbon on the shelf is a good practice. It is most often used in the freshwater hobby for removing yellow tannins coming from new wood, the removal of medications after the prescriptive period has ended or the occasional organic odor of unknown origin. The carbon that comes with a new filter is often good to set aside in the closet as often none of the above conditions is true for the new tank.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[nano_reef_ubergeek]

I know that I may be more prone to some problems because I have a saltwater tank, lack of appetite is one, because you have to sit around and hope it gets better ... or try different frozen foods, or live food.

I had a lot less problems when I had no filter at all (which you can do with a reef tank) .... but I made the mistake of not doing any water changes at all (my nitrates tested at zero every week) and I made the mistake of buying a delicate fish and not using a quarantine tank. I think that the oxygen level was not as high as it could be/should be without a filter also.

I know that when I read reviews of Chemi-Pure ....maybe some of them had freshwater tanks .... I should have weighted those reviews differently perhaps.

 

[waterdrop]

One of the things I've been reminded of since my return to the hobby and my time here on TFF is that there is very large range and variety to the situations that people can get themselves in to or be put in. To help with the large variety of situations there can be techniques and the things needed to carry the techniques out that may not be part of the general lore that passed around most of the time.

I've seen situations described where various bottles from the shelf, ammonia removal resins, pure-i-gen and others are very useful. Chemi-pure may indeed play a good role like this, so I'm not trying to say there's anything necessarily wrong with the product. I'm just trying to insert, at the right moment for beginners so that they put things in context, that there are definately ways to run a tank that are very simple, straight-forward and inexpensive and should be learned and tried as the first path tried.

Although I don't have experience in saltwater, I've seen enough details to know that there are significant differences (eg. light, substrates, protein skimmers, water chemistry) and that leaves me unqualified to speculate about areas that might be shared, like chemi-pure, by both salt and freshwater hobbies.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[nano_reef_ubergeek]

I think that with something like chemi-pure elite -- it's supposed to work miracles: control PH, remove negative ions, "scavange" nitrates and remove phosphates -- and fish are very delicate, so it may be hit and miss if someone tries something like this. It is probably better to keep it simple.

I don't want to make too many changes --- so I'm not going to remove the Chemi-Pure filter until I've given everything in the tank a chance to adapt --- but eventually I may end up running with straight carbon (the coral that shriveled up after I added the filter has now fully recovered --- but the clownfish and the emerald crab have been having a difficult time).