Complete noob, few questions?

[Doobze]

So, I just got myself a 46 gallon bowfront, filled it with water and live sand yesterday.

My set up includes a Fluval 305 canister filter, a 200w aqueon submersible heater, and a coralife aqualight T-5 for lighting.

Gonna be a FOWLR, first fish will probably be an Ocellaris clown in some weeks.

Am I missing anything? Setting myself up for failure haha? Suggestions or tweaks?

 

[badwrasse]

take any sponges or pads out of you canister

 

[Doobze]

Perfectly willing to, but why haha?

 

[eric@tampa]

it becomes a nitrate factory if you don't

 

[Aqua Keepers]

Those sponges will trap what we call detritus (AKA fish crap).
That build up of detritus will cause other probs. Leave them off.

 

[Doobze]

Ok, I'll take the sponge filters out. What should I count on for mechanical filtration then?

 

[Doobze]

Also, another question, I used all live sand for my substrate, and it's still settling, which is fine, but it seems like the slightest disturbance to the sand bed easily clouds the water. Will this effect calm down? Or is there something I should be doing about it?

 

[merek123]

maybe build a sump? biological/mechanical filtration.

 

[pimpinitup6969]

Yeah the cloudiness will subside. Def remove the sponge filters and i would start looking for a hang on back skimmer if your not gonna go with a sump. STAY AWAY from the seaclone skimmers they are worthless!

 

[Doobze]

I might get a sump eventually, the problem is I'll have to build a custom one because of the shape of the stand, nothing too serious, probably just grab a suitably sized small tank and build it out of that. But until I'm more learned and confident in doing this kind of thing I'll probably stick with the canister.

If I get a hang on protein skimmer, I can always attach it to the sump once I get one, correct?

And would I still have problems with nitrate and detritus in my sponges even if I stayed on top of cleaning them monthly and replacing them when needed?

And its probably ok to keep the sponges on to help with the sandstorm for now, right?

 

[Aqua Keepers]

yes you can place the skimmer in sump later.

You'll need to clean those sponges daily. Just take them off. There's no need for them.

 

[lkc]

What about Live Rock? You said fowLR right?

 

[sdc19982002]

If your doing a fish only you can leave the sponges in the filter. Nitrates arent a problem for fish unless they get way out of hand. If and when you start adding corals,inverts then worry about high nitrates.

 

[scottsr]

I have never had a good experience with HOB filters, I never removed the sponges maybe that was the problem. Use LR in there that will help filter the water. I only use a sump with a DSB cheato/ mangroves and LR for filtration.

 

[JLAURIA751]

About The sand what size did you use if its sugar sand you probally would want to replace it because it will get disturbed easily, and it gets into power heads, and pumps and burns them out.

 

[small alien]

I think leaving the sponges in until the sand storm ends is smart. might even take them out and rinse them and put them back in to catch more particles. once that's done, they should go. Do you understand the cycling process?

 

[Doobze]

Yeah, pretty much. I'm definitely gonna be using LR for a large part of my bio filtration. As for the sand, I'm using all live sand, white crushed aragonite. The tank's pretty much cleared up, so I'm gonna take a look at the sponge filter and see what it looks like and clean it out and maybe it'll pick up more particulate. Right now I've been kicking around the idea of putting together a small sump out of a 10g aquarium at some point down the road. The only thing is my glass aquarium isn't drilled for overflow and the idea of having it work on a siphon sort of freaks me out haha, I don't want it breaking and causing a small flood.