Canister Filter Died...do I need to replace it?

[madmax7774]

Folks it's been a mighty long time Since Ive been on, but I have been doing really well with my tank over the last year. Except for one unlucky tang, All my livestock has been thriving, coral has been growing and critters have been reproducing like crazy. (my initial purchase 30 or so snails has exploded into well over 100! My setup is a 75 gallon main tank, a 30 gallon sump/refugium. I use only ro/di water from my own filter setup, and always use reef crystals. My lights are 2 175watt MH@20,000K 125 lbs of live rock, and lots of course live sand mixed with lots of rubble. I also run a UV sterilizer, and have lots of main tank circulation, and the turn-over beween the sump and the main tank is faily good. My protein skimmer is an el-cheapo coralife 125, but dang-it, that thing works great for me, so until it dies, I'm going to stick with it. I also ***had*** an eheim canister filter on their as well, which was rated up to 150g. When I started this month's maintenance cleaning, I noticed the ehiem was extremely hot, and smelled terrible. Turns out the electrical drive mechanism got so hot it melted the plastic, and seized the plastic rotor, and self destructed. I felt like I needed the canister filter in the very beginning to help get the bio-cycle established, and keep things extra clean to get everything going, and to help protect me from stupid rookie errors. My test have always been excellent, and other than a very slightly elevated phospahte level, everything is spot on. A guy I am aquainted with at work who fancies himself a reef specialist, says that the canister filter was marginal at best, and a phosphate generator at worst, and thinks my system will be fine without it. I am not 100% sure and am soliciting opinions from the the experts. My thought is that Everything has been going so well that I ought not to upset the apple cart so to speak by removing the canister filter from the equation. what do you think?

[inedukated]

You don't need it. Like bio-balls, they're great to help get you started, but with all that biological filtration you've got, you shouldn't have any problems without it.

 

Many will also tell you that canister filters just harvest harmful bacteria and algae, so you're probably helping things out by removing it.

 

JMO

-Ben

[dhoch]

With pleanty of live rock it shouldn't be a problem... you might notice a little raise in NO3, but that will be soon passed if the LR has the capacity to chew this down as well, just will take some time...

 

Do you have pleanty of flow after loosing the canister?

 

Dave

[Grav]

I agree, toss it. Maybe add a powerhead to make up for flow loss