Cryptic canister filter???

pirate9182 · May 7, 2023

Has anyone had success with turning a small canister into a cryptic zone? If so any tips? Or articles to read?

blaxsun · May 7, 2023

pirate9182 · May 7, 2023

blaxsun said:
?

I read a decent amount about turning areas of the sump into cryptic zones and have seen one or two people mentions they accomplished this with a canister filter, however these posts are years old so I was wondering if anyone has had any long term success with this and how I would go about doing it and at what stage in the reefs maturation it would be viable to start. I know I would need live rock rubble and possibly seeding of sponges but that's about all I can seem to figure out.

Mr_Knightley · May 7, 2023

I have never heard of this! It sounds awesome though. If I were to do this, I would have a mixture of live rock and something like Matala mat to fill in the gaps for maximum surface area without the risk of clogging. Finding good sponge candidates might prove to be the hardest part, but given time, it would most likely populate itself just with whatever is already in your tank.

CoastalTownLayabout · May 7, 2023

The Reef Aquarium Vol 3 has a section on cryptic refugiums. They refer to it as Natural Enviromental Gradient (EG) zonal filtration. Bit of a mouthful!

pirate9182 · May 8, 2023

CoastalTownLayabout said:
The Reef Aquarium Vol 3 has a section on cryptic refugiums. They refer to it as Natural Enviromental Gradient (EG) zonal filtration. Bit of a mouthful!

Thanks for the tip.... maybe I can find an online version as amazon wants $263 for the hard copy

pirate9182 · May 8, 2023

Mr_Knightley said:
I have never heard of this! It sounds awesome though. If I were to do this, I would have a mixture of live rock and something like Matala mat to fill in the gaps for maximum surface area without the risk of clogging. Finding good sponge candidates might prove to be the hardest part, but given time, it would most likely populate itself just with whatever is already in your tank.

I have thought about the matala mat my only concern would be it needing to be cleaned over time normally that wouldn't be a concern however my understand is that these sponges can't be exposed to light and air so not sure how I would clean it with out risking some sort of die off. I was thinking that if I put some rubble and maybe one solid piece of lr in the canister with no baskets I could potentially open the canister and siphon out excess detritus if ever needed... but then I run into the issue of low flow while re priming the canister I could potentially damage the sponges. In reality the way I'm gonna stock thos tank I probablly won't need a cryptic zone I wanted to do this as more of an experiment

Mr_Knightley · May 8, 2023

pirate9182 said:
I have thought about the matala mat my only concern would be it needing to be cleaned over time normally that wouldn't be a concern however my understand is that these sponges can't be exposed to light and air so not sure how I would clean it with out risking some sort of die off. I was thinking that if I put some rubble and maybe one solid piece of lr in the canister with no baskets I could potentially open the canister and siphon out excess detritus if ever needed... but then I run into the issue of low flow while re priming the canister I could potentially damage the sponges. In reality the way I'm gonna stock thos tank I probablly won't need a cryptic zone I wanted to do this as more of an experiment

I see where you're coming from.. There are a few intertidal species of sponge that can take a fair amount of air exposure, perhaps you could look into one of those. Hymeniacidon perlevis is one I'm keeping right now, doesn't mind light or air exposure.

ReefGeezer · May 8, 2023

The velocity needed to carry oxygen through a small closed space is likely too high for many cryptic organisms to survive let alone flourish. In a standard refugium, water can flow over and around the rocks. Organisms can find flow and oxygen levels they desire.

pirate9182 · May 9, 2023

ReefGeezer said:
The velocity needed to carry oxygen through a small closed space is likely too high for many cryptic organisms to survive let alone flourish. In a standard refugium, water can flow over and around the rocks. Organisms can find flow and oxygen levels they desire.

Yea that is true I did have concerns about and that may be why I've seldomly seen people talk about it

Reef-Engineer · Jul 22, 2024

Resurrecting this thread... I plan to do just this. Buy a Fluval 407 or some other large canister filter, fill it with a mix of LR rubble, bio media and some negative space, remove all the normal sponge media or anything likely to clog over time, and just let it run, closed, for a long time. Maybe I'll peak from time to time.

These filters hallmark is providing unidirectional flow across media, so I am not worried at all about anoxic zones. I hope for filtering featherdusters, sponges, and other cryptic critters to take up residence. The way I figure it, it is pretty much just like having a sump fuge area filled with LR rubble, I just dont have the sump space to do it in there.

So for a few Watts, it is a cheap addition of bio media. Which, for many of the minimal rock scape tanks I see today, would be a big help. I'll post pics once I do it.