Should I go without any mechanical filtration?

[Hoopz87]

I have a 29 gallon cube with about 35 pounds of live rock, few zoa colonies, LPS, clam, euphylia's, RBTA, sps, xenia etc. . The tank has been up since December but I've been battling a nitrate problem recently. I have a kessil a360w over it, my zoas are always doing great and growing, my lps is usually pretty good except very very slow growth, and my sps is definite taking notice of the high nitrate so the first step I took was getting rid of the canister filter I had on it. Without weekly cleaning, it's not worth it for a reef and just builds nitrate. Now I still have my hang on back filter with purigen, poly, sponge, and biomaxx ceramic pellets. I'm taking the biomaxx out because it's not doing anything different than my LR is doing, but my question is wether I should take out the poly and/or sponge. I'm reading on other posts that for a reef they could be quite a problem. Thanks for any comments and help

 

[pyithar]

if you can clean them every few days, they're useful. if not, foods and junks will be trapped and later rot which leads to more nitrate problem. you should get a skimmer since you have sps in your tank and they don't really like the presence of nitrates in the tank.

 

[lutz123]

I have 3 nanos (well, 16 gallon, 3 gallon, and 34 gallon) and all have flow, but I rarely use any filtration and don't do very regular water changes. All three are great. I try to use filter floss that I change every week, but have had spurts of many months without. Currently only my pico has it. The tanks are great! The two larger tanks are AIO, the pico has an aquaclear 20. I don't have sps though because that is way too much maintenance for me. SPS needs much more pristine water conditions.