LR or wet/dry?

[kingsnar]

Hi there is my first post here and I have become very interested in bimacs. I have read most of the articles thus far. One thing that I have a question on is filtration. I assume LR is better than a wet/dry. What do you guys use for filtration? Would a wet/dry filter, a hang on tank refugium, plus about 30 LBS of LR be good for a bimac in a 75 gallon tank?

 

[cthulhu77]

Well, there are different schools of thought on that one...personally, I prefer to use live rock and a lot of physical filteration over a wet/dry, but that is also due to the fact that I live in the desert, and evaporation takes too heavy of a toll on the refugium.

 

[Illithid]

I think your setup WITH a wet/dry sounds good.

Many reef enthusiasts believe that removal of the bio balls is beneficial to filtrations as it produced less nitrates. I disagree, most wet/drys have bio balls in the dry section, but not in the wet where denitrification happens. If all your media is in the ammonia processing area (which EVERYONE agrees does a great job), there isn't any media for denitrification and you get nitrates. I put equal amounts of bio balls in the top and bottom of my DIY wet/dry and just did a long messy cycle with multiple bumps and my nitrate is at 10 ppm and dropping.

Ask 10 people and you will get 11 answers (...and my brother did it this way.) Whatever you do- be prepared to handle nitrates through denitrification or water changes. In my opinion -live rock takes a long time to meet its potential for nitrates, and that ceiling still has less surface area than bio balls.

 

[kingsnar]

Would a refugium take care of nitrates?

 

[Fini]

Depends on whats in there. You could use it to grow macroalgae which can help with denitrification quite a lot. I've also know people use mangrove trees in there for that reason as well though I don't know how well this method works.

 

[Illithid]

Would a refugium take care of nitrates?

If you stack it full of Cheato or mangrove it would. You then have to trim back the algae growth, it's called "nutrient export".