Rethinking AIO filtration JBJ 45

[Letterkenny]

In my JBJ 45, my nitrates always seem to be a bit higher than where I want (Red Sea test kit at 10-20, looking like 15) regardless if I do a 15% water change or not. I only have a pair of clowns and a Midas Blenny and try not to feed to much (daily and only what they can eat). All other parameters are fine. I’m running an in tank media basket with filter floss, chemipure elite, and purigen, a Tunze 9004DC skimmer at 100% (which also seems to take a while to fill even though I’m trying to run it “wet”), and a filter sock.

I am thinking of changing the media basket to run chemipure blue, purigen, and maybe GFO/phosguard and getting an in tank refugium basket and running that in place of the filter sock. Any thoughts on what I should be running back there?

 

[Jseimo]

personally I’d ditch the chemipure and purigen. I’d also ditch the sock. I’d look into brightwell aquatics export line. Their export po4 work well for me. As for the macro. Ever thought of adding something like dragons breath macro to the display instead?

 

[Tuffyyyyy]

Are you vacuuming out the back chamber every week? That's where I was doing 90% of my water changes until I switched from socks to filter floss. Even still that's where most of my detritus is going.

 

[BirdGuy21]

I have the same tank and have been working on nutrient export for a few months. I run two InTank media baskets, one in each overflow. Top has filter floss that I change out twice a week, middle Seachem Pond Matrix, and bottom GFO in one, Carbon in the other in a bag. I alternate vacuuming out the back chambers one week and lightly vacuuming the sand bed the next week. If there’s not a lot of detritus coming up I can sometimes do both. I also periodically use a turkey baster to blow off the rocks and sand bed.

I upgraded to an IceCap Gyre 1k and the increased flow helps keep detritus suspended and eventually gets caught in my filter floss and removed. I’d take a look at what your total tank turnover is as well.

 

[45ZoaGarden]

Same tank. I’m running two bags of purigen, poly filter and filter floss in c1, carbon reactor in c2, gfo reactor in return chamber, tunze 9004 in c4, 11w sterilizer in c5 and a hob cheato reactor going into c5. Nitrates pretty stable at about 10ppm and I feed heavily. I’m going to add a biopellet reactor to get them down to 5ppm because I like to my inhabitants fed.

 

[BirdGuy21]

Same tank. I’m running two bags of purigen, poly filter and filter floss in c1, carbon reactor in c2, gfo reactor in return chamber, tunze 9004 in c4, 11w sterilizer in c5 and a hob cheato reactor going into c5. Nitrates pretty stable at about 10ppm and I feed heavily. I’m going to add a biopellet reactor to get them down to 5ppm because I like to my inhabitants fed.

Which brand of reactors do you run? Interested to see the HOB chaeto reactor.

 

[45ZoaGarden]

For internal internal reactors , my carbon and gfo, I’m using the aquamaxx frs. For the cheato reactor, I’m using an aquamaxx frs-e with a sicce 120gph pump, Amazon light strips, and an Amazon fan. The fan is on the bottom of the light cover to keep everything cool so I don’t have to look at the ugly red light in my living room. The whole build was pretty economical as well being around $100.

Which brand of reactors do you run? Interested to see the HOB chaeto reactor.

 

[Letterkenny]

Thanks all. I haven’t been vacuuming my back chambers but will begin to. My rocks, sand, etc are all fairly clean from algae and detritus. My CUC seems to do a good job. @45ZoaGarden I might take a look at something like this.

 

[Letterkenny]

For internal internal reactors , my carbon and gfo, I’m using the aquamaxx frs. For the cheato reactor, I’m using an aquamaxx frs-e with a sicce 120gph pump, Amazon light strips, and an Amazon fan. The fan is on the bottom of the light cover to keep everything cool so I don’t have to look at the ugly red light in my living room. The whole build was pretty economical as well being around $100.

I ended up getting two of those aquamaxx reactors during Black Friday. I plan to run carbon and gfo in them but might switch the carbon to biopellets. I don’t want to be chasing numbers here since I don’t have any algae outbreaks and all corals are open and happy but figured having a couple reactors wouldn’t hurt in the long run.