Equipment Review and Discussion :: Thoughts on my arrangement?

[Rubicon]

It's a Fluval 404 w/ 4 trays.


Top
____________________
[Biomax ]
[Carbon bags ]
[Carbon bags ]
[Coarse Ceramic things]
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Bottom

I'm tempted to get rid of the 2nd from top tray and run Biomax in that one also. It's supposed to be great for controlling nitrates.

[Chrisbarnett]

Carbon is basically useless. Ditch it for 3 baskets of bio media and in the top basket put filter floss or some other similar fine filter media for crystal clear water.

[BullDog]

I've gone back to using Carbon myself. I would say though only 1 basket of carbon though, and use 2 baskets of biomedia. Also, the Fluval prefilter isn't great. You may want to put a coarse filter pad on top of the prefilter.

[Chrisbarnett]

Prefilter is completely pointless in the 404 because water flows through the foam on the left side of the canister first catching all the large and medium particles.

I'm thinking of changing mine up to this, so that only the cleanest water reaches my biomedia.

top to bottom:
Biomax
Biomax
Biomax/Purigen(maybe)
Microfiltration media.(filter floss/pantyhose filter)

[Rubicon]

Hmm the panty hose seems like a great idea. The only reason I'm running the carbon is because it came with the kit. Is that ceramic stuff any good?

I'm going to petsmart tomorrow to get atleast two more boxes of biomax.

[BullDog]

I found the prefilter doesn't do much. Chris is right, the foam blocks catch a lot of the big stuff. But I found that a lot of the big stuff was getting to my next layer (the carbon). The carbon was getting gunked up really quickly, so I let the carbon act as a mechanical filter for while. Then I got added a couple layers of coarse filtration (it's actually for an air filter), and that helped a lot!

The only reason I use the prefilter is because I bought it, and I figured I may as well use it.

Since you've just set it up, I'd say take one layer of the carbon out, and let it dry. It should still be alright to use to replace the other stuff in a few months.

Just FYI, I think there are 2 different box sizes of biomax. You may only need one box to fill up one basket, or one big box to fill up two baskets.

[Rubicon]

Would two layers of carbon bags slow up water flow?

[BullDog]

Any media will slow down the flow. Since the carbon is in bags, I think it will slow it down the flow a bit, but no more than anything else.

[Caphits]

I think the real question is do you really need that much carbon. I would bet that more biomedia would help your tank more.

[Chrisbarnett]

And you don't even need carbon. Use up the space with biomedia

[Rubicon]

Ok so what if I did this.

Biomax
Biomax
Ceramic Bits
Custom cut sponges


How would that work?

[Chrisbarnett]

if the sponges are very fine, then yes. That's a very good arrangement. The ceramic bits are still useless though as they will not be filtering out large paticles and have little to no surface area for biological bacteria colonization.

[Rubicon]

Hmm then I will probably just go with three levels of biomax and one level of fine sponge.