Filtration Adequate Or Not.

[noteworthy]

Hey guys,


If you've seen any of my posts you know I have a 55 gallon that has been up about a month. I've got some hair-like algea that is brown growing on the walls of my tank and sand.


Currently the tank holds the following:
3 snails
2 crabs
2 cleaner shrimp
1 chocolate chip starfish
2 damsels


All my test come out okay but I'm curious about water flow/filtration.

30 lbs base rock (just added)
30 lbs live rock - in the tank about a month.
20 lbs live sand
30 lbs argonite (dead) sand

Seaclone 100 (modded) - picked up some red stuff.. looks like blood. I was working on the tank a while back and I think I cut myself in the tank.

Also a penguin 330 - with biowheels that will be removed soon to keep nitrates down some.


Also I have a 20 dollar powerhead - the only one walmart carries... 200 gph? not sure.


My question is would it be reasonable for me to ditch the penguin 330 and rely on the live rock/sand and skimmer for filtration. If so when would this be? Is my current rock adequate?

How many power heads do I need?


Thanks for your time.


I plan to add a couple clowns in the future but I will have to remove atleast one damsel because it is super aggressive towards the other.

 

[Salttanker]

I'm not sure if you really need a biowheel since you have lr in there already. I would buy more lr when you can. As far as filtration is concerned, the skimmer won't be a part of the filtration. Since it is a 55 gal, you will want at least 550 gph in there. Most people here just get 2-3 Mj 1200's and that does the trick for filtration. HTH

Mike

 

[noteworthy]

Yeah I am going to remove the biowheels. I'm just curious how long it will take to seed the base rock and if it would be acceptable to totally remove the penguin hob filter.


The 10x rule I've heard quite a bit so if I had 10-15x of movement from powerheads and 1-1.5 lbs rock for every gallon I would be set?

 

[seaham358]

You say all tests come out ok??? If you have hair algae you have some type of excess nutrients... how about some numbers on Nitrate and phosphates..
Did you cycle the tank? If so what did you use... Why no fish yet if all the nember are ok?

 

[noteworthy]

Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 15
pH - 8.2
Salinity is 1.021

Tank has been up for a month. I cycled fishless with raw shrimp. I have two damsels now. Decided to add a cleanup crew of some sort to help combat the algae breakout. I believe what you would call it is a type of 'diatom' breakout from a fresh tank that has just cycled.


I probably need to do a water change. Numbers are looking okay and my skimmer is pulling some brownish stuff out. Still working on setting it perfect. It has a bit too much liquid in the output.