To sock or not to sock...

Sk8r

Staff member
RC Mod
This question came to me and seems good for discussion:
SHOULD I USE A FILTER SOCK?
The answer is: it varies with the tank and with the thing you're keeping.
If you need hyper-clean water, say, for sps corals, it may help.
If you need slightly 'dirty' water for sps or softies, I wouldn't. The floating debris it eliminates is food for these guys.
If your aim is to keep pod-eaters like dragonets, I prefer not to have one. Pods can get through an Iwaki 100 pump, up 15 feet of hose, through the display and back down again a 15 foot fall to the sump, all quite unscathed. I have copepods and edible larger pods, little shrimps, all sorts of things happily growing in my fuge: the place is crawling with them---I have cheato growing under an ordinary CFL bulb (7.00 max at your local hardware) and a second deep sand bed, with live rock, and the place choked with cheato---flowthrough rate is very fast, incidentally---and I choose not to have a fabric sock. The fact is, a huge cheato ball that ALL water has to flow through acts like a filter sock, but the bennie is, it stops the detritus and lets it fall to the #2 sandbed, where crabs and worms have their go at it; and pods swarm in the weed. It's lush enough I can support both a mandarin and a scooter blenny (both dragonets, both obligate pod-eaters) in good health in a 54 gallon reef; plus I'm pretty sure my lps are not averse to copepod for dessert, either---they're huge, filling half the tank in sheer volume, and always in huge extension. So they, I'm sure, like both the 'dirty' water and the copepods.

My advice would be---if you need hyper-clean water, go one way. If you have a fish-only or an lps or softie tank, ask yourself if a weed-stuffed fuge as a must-flow-through-here wouldn't serve you better.

It's the same business with filters: I don't run one at all. If you have some varieties of very messy fish in a fish-only you may need one---if a sandbed and live rock can't keep up; but why go to the work if you can get by without? A stuffed fuge doesn't have to be cleaned or serviced...the critters eat the detritus, and produce more critters that feed the fish upstairs, and you don't have to work. What you do need is a semi-decent skimmer to keep the other kind of waste under control, but I find that that is pulling less and less as the corals get bigger---they must be sucking up some of what the skimmer used to get. (We're talking size of a basketball.)

Anyway---among all the things you need to spend scarce start-up money on, my money would go for a good sump and as big a fuge as you can swing, and you'll have a lot less maintenance and fuss, and leaving your tank in the care of a tanksitter will be very much safer.

My opinions. Not the only opinions. But it works for me.
 
Refugiums are one of the best nutrient exports that you can have in a tank, and they supply the little much needed critters in our tanks with a safe haven. I use a rubbermaid sump for now and inside it I have two other rubbermaid tubs with calupera in one with live rock rubble and a 4" sand bed. Its stuffed with the calupera and then I have a good softball sized clump of chaetomorpha in the rubbermaid sump so it can tumble and get some water flow. In the smaller rubbermaid tub I've found if I just peel back the top layer of calupera I get pods jumping all over my hands and into the sump. I'll occasionaly take some of the LR rubble out and put it in the DT and take some of the LR rubble from the DT and replace it. This puts some of the bigger amphipods into my tank to breed in the DT and also is a good treat for my bigger fish.
 
Another thing that should be pointed out is that they need to be cleaned or swapped out every 3-4 days, or they can become a nitrate sink.
If you aren't dilligent enough to stay on top of that(I admit I'm not, so don't use them very often) then it may be better to just not use them.
I only use them when I want really crystal clear photos of my tank.
 
I started my tank with filter socks, but after awhile got tired of constantly swapping them out and cleaning them. Within a few weeks my tank was cloudy, and worst of all, my sump was collecting detritus that the sock would normally filter out. IMHO the sock helps reduce the load on your skimmer and keeps your sump and tank clean. Yes, they can become a nitrate sink IF you don't swap them out, but not as bad as the nitrate sink caused by gunk settling on the bottom of your sump. In the end, i found it a lot less of a pain to swap out my socks versus vacuuming my sump.
 
I use filter socks (either 25 or 100 microns) & swap them out every 2-3 days. Not nearly the nitrate sink that filter floss was...& much clearer water...
 
Another thing that should be pointed out is that they need to be cleaned or swapped out every 3-4 days, or they can become a nitrate sink.
If you aren't dilligent enough to stay on top of that(I admit I'm not, so don't use them very often) then it may be better to just not use them.
I only use them when I want really crystal clear photos of my tank.

I think this is relative to your tank. I change mine once every 2 weeks and my nitrates are always at 0.
 
Thanks again Sk8r,

another great post for the NTTH forum, I'd like to piggy back on what you said.

I have an SPS dominate tank with a few LPS and zoas. I use a filter sock all the time but notice that as of lately a favia, Trumpet and frogspawn colony have been looking rather pale and seems that they are loosing their zooxanthella, which I believe are being starved, from the clean water and undetectable N03 and P04. I started to stagger the use of the filter sock as to only go 3 days with it and 4 days without it. It's still too early to tell but it seems like their colors are starting to return, and the tank doesn't seem any different (as far as water clarity and floating debris). So hopefully this is a good compromise...... we'll see.
 
i got tired of changeing sock every 2 or 3 days too i have my tank up for 5 weeks and so far i have no promblems with tank , im trying sponges in sump instaed of sock water travels up threw sponges and into next chamber i have 2 stacked on top of each other im cleaning them 1 a week my nitrates are good and water seems to be as clear as it was with sock so maybe staying with sponges
 
filter "sock" = one type of mechanical filtration.

large reef displays and public aquariums often employ sand filters for mechanical filtration.

personally, I use mechanical filtration in my reef system. I made this decision after several years of on and off experimentation.

mechanical filter socks are a "green" type of filtration because they use gravity and no additional electricity.
 
Ok, I have a question on cheato and the fuge. I have a 75g sump with basically 4 compartments. The water dumps in on the leftside flows over a baffle to a section with a deep sandbed and live rock, flows over another baffle to a section that currently only houses a pump for my eco-cooler, the flows over a final baffle to the return pump section. When I originally tried to place cheato in here, I would constantly have to dig it out of the pump strainers so it wouldn't clog the pumps. Is there a way to keep it in one section so this wouldn't happen. I have been battling a phosphate problem for months now and I am sure running cheato would help solve that issue.
 
Go to your hobby store and get some plastic needlepoint canvas: it won't stop all of it, but it'll stop a significant lot of it. The actual cure for it all is a high low baffle arrangement that makes fugitive macro have to go to the bottom (it floats high) before passing into the next section. If you alter the baffling in your sump you can arrange that. But the needlepoint canvas may be enough. Ideally, when your cheato gets quite thick, it'll bump up against the barrier and serve as a 'stop' for its own bits and pieces escaping.
 
a note on the sps v lps problem: when you really get into growing them, you may be forced to a choice. I started out sps, but in the move, the only thing that survived was the lps. I gave up on superclean water (just too much to do) and I have a 'filthy' system---which of course the pods think is wonderful. And the lps is growing like mad. I have got to frag it ---it's running into the glass. The problem is less imho that lps and sps chemically fuss with each other (they do) but that they thrive most in different environments, and halfway is only going to make both sides of the environment less than completely happy. Super clean or slightly 'dirty' is a choice that will either produce pretty colored sticks in abundance or poofy abundant large polyps wall to wall.
 
I have mostly LPS so I like my water a little dirty, but after a certain point the junk in the water starts to bother me. I run a filter sock for a day every two weeks or so. I usually crank up the flow and turkey baster the rocks and let the sock catch all the crap. To me it's way easier than vacuuming up stuff, it keeps the tank clean enough for my viewing pleasure, and the coral can feed out of the water column most of the time since it only takes a day or two for the water to get stuff in it again.
 
No sock IMO.

Circulation is the key. Instead of the flakes going over the falls and sitting in a sock for awhile, you might as well just let everything go around and let nature take it's course. Whether the eXtras sit on the top of your sandbed or the bottom of your sump, if there's life in that tank, they should make short work of that.
 
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I dont use a sock either, I use a turkey baster to suck up detritus from the sump, Ive never seen a problem with any detritus in the tank, maybe Im lucky.
 
I think this is relative to your tank. I change mine once every 2 weeks and my nitrates are always at 0.

That's good that your tank is doing well, but the general consensus among most if not all experienced reefers is change or clean every 3-4 days.
There could come a time your nitrates may increase w/ your present plan.
I would rather advocate keeping good habits regardless.
 
That's good that your tank is doing well, but the general consensus among most if not all experienced reefers is change or clean every 3-4 days.
There could come a time your nitrates may increase w/ your present plan.
I would rather advocate keeping good habits regardless.

I understand. But I find in this hobby, as is in many other hobbies, that too many people just do what everyone else does (sheep) without even knowing why (or if it's right). So far, from my reading there's a huge disparity in sock use. Lots of interesting reading for sure.

Would changing the sock every 3-4 days hurt? Certainly not.
 
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