Need help with 24g aio filter setup

[rjdupont1]

I recently picked up a fully set up 24g aquatop aio. Instead of the sponge and skimmer in the back he was using Chaetos and copopods?. He said he was winging it and wasn’t sure of maintence. It still has the media boxes filled with media. Not sure how often everything needs to be changed. I’ve only ever used skimmer and filters but it’s been years. Any help would be appreciated. It’s a healthy tank so what he was doing seemed to be working but I’m lost. Attached is the filter set up currently. At first the water levels differed in the back chambers and would flow over the lip of the second chamber.

 

[SPR1968]

I can’t answer the specific question, but I can bump the thread to see if we can get you some help

 

[Calebd91]

I setup the same tank for my fiancé, we have great success with running no skimmer. I modified a floss tray from a water box 20 to run in the first chamber with just a square of floss on top and a small square of black sponge to catch any large particles that may fall when doing floss change, second chamber where the media boxes are I removed all but 1 in the bottom with ceramic media. We run a refugium in that section as well. The third (return pump) chamber I put a sicce 1.0 pump and coralife uv sterilizer in and a random flow generator nozzle.

Your water level in rear seems a bit high, I keep ours just about flush to the bulkhead for return.

 

[Calebd91]

Does it still have the clear piece that hooks over the overflow slots? I drilled 5 1/8” holes to set display water level about 7/8” from the rim as we run a kraken lid and the added output of the sicce pump made it salt creep bad around the rimless edge

 

[Calebd91]

I’ll try and grab pic of the filter area but it’s against the wall pretty tight

 

[MandosReef]

I’ll try and grab pic of the filter area but it’s against the wall pretty tight

Hey, I'm currently trying to upgrade the stock return pump for this tank and I was hoping you could help!

How did you plumb your return? Did you add a bulk head and barb fitting or are you using the stock plastic pipe that it come with?

Sorry for all the questions I've been trying to google and look at other builds but can't find anything and I'm a noob when it comes to plumbing.