The Puffer Forum

I feel I need serious help here! My Toby is in a 30g biocube. She is doing wonderful. It's just her a spotted Goby, crushed coral substrate and about 30lbs of LR. I set up the tank with the media it came with.

First chamber-sponge media
Second chamber-ceramic rings, carbon and plastic bio-balls
Third chamber-heater

Upon further research I have found that using the media that came with it is not the best for SW. I am looking for advice as to how I should set up the chambers to be more effective. I know I need to add a skimmer for one. There are skimmers made specific for these types of tanks, right, with them being all self contained? Any suggestion would be great! Should I use LR rubble in one of the chambers?

1st & 2nd chamber, rubble.

I also plan on leaving this a FOWLR tank, so no corals. What is a good salinity to keep the tank at? I've been using RO/DI water thus far. Since I'm not going to be keeping corals should my tap water be okay?

Pufferpunk wrote:1st & 2nd chamber, rubble.

Cure it in a bucket, right?

keep using the RO if you're going to keep corals and don't want to battle hair algae blooms. I don't usually disagree with PP but this one I'm gong to have to. The LR will be a detritus trap just as much in the chambers unless cleaned regularly; happened to me in my 14g Biocube. I keep a home made egg crate media rack with a filter pad on the top for crystal water and in the second chamber I keep a bag of purigen in the middle, and a bag of Chemipure elite in the bottom; in the first chamber is my skimmer. You could keep the purigen in the first intake chamber if you want if you're not using the skimmer.

I've also modded my Biocube a bit. I've cut off that little tab between the second and third tray it helps improve the flow, I've replaced the stock pump with a Maxijet 900 and for the output I used a Hydor Flo. I pulled out the false bottom in the first two chambers with a long needle nosed plyer. You could also buy this nifty small waterproof under water LED light from mediabaskets.com and put a ball of Chaeto in the middle chamber or scrape the paint off the back with a putty knife and use a fuge light there. If you use the Chaeto put a coarse sponge in the bottom intake in the third chamber to ensure that no Chaeto clogs up your pump.

1.023 - 1.025 for FOWLR 1.025 for Reef

Srkoe wrote:I also plan on leaving this a FOWLR tank, so no corals. What is a good salinity to keep the tank at? I've been using RO/DI water thus far. Since I'm not going to be keeping corals should my tap water be okay?

I don't usually disagree with PP but this one I'm gong to have to. The LR will be a detritus trap just as much in the chambers unless cleaned regularly; happened to me in my 14g Biocube.

LOL, actually I totally agree with you & removed all the rubble from my HOB filters & now just use them for flow (if at all) but most folks insist on something so I give them the rubble advice. It seems to work well on my frag tank though, since I don't feed them much & there really isn't any detritus in there (not many frags either...).

Sessile inverts do need more current than filter media. many folks are so habituated to FW filtration techniques that a media-free filter makes them nervous.

Some of us don't mind it at all, I use media-free filters (commonly smallish external filters) routinely to fine-tune currents, even in FW.

I'm fine with no media. I just need help...lol! I actually have some chemi-pure but just haven't added it. I'm probably gonna start taking the media out slowly over a few weeks time so I don't crash the system. Thanks guys! I WILL NOT be keeping any corals...Ashera eats everything, so could I use tap water?

This depends on your tap water. Mine is "unusual". I'd at the very least find out the phosphate levels of the tap, no one likes excessive algae.

Yeah--if you love algae, use tap water.

High nitrate, high phosphate,high silicate could any or all make anyone consider some pretreatment of the water.