New Nano-Cube 24 - some questions

[Madmak]

Hi all,

I have been out of the SW hobby for over a decade but was in to SW and FW tanks in the early 90s. Things were a lot different back then...

I have picked up a 24G Nano-Cube with PC lighting and have had it up for a few months now, I will work on a LS list and signature here soon, its looking ok so far. My main question is regarding the various mechanical and biological filtration methods that have been used in these AIO Nanos and which methods have proved successful???

I currently am running:

First chamber (from the overflow down)
1" coarse foam, 3" floss, 1" carbon, 1" chemi-pure, 1" purigen

Second chamber
Refugium with 6" of LR rubble, chaeto, LED light

Third chamber
Oceanic nano-skimmer and return pump

Any ideas or comments are much appreciated.

[Cugio]

I have chamber 1: floss, sponge, rowaphos in a bag, floss then another sponge. Chamber 2 is a protein skimmer. Chamber 3 is maxi jet 1200 and heater.

I had chamber 1 and 2 filled with live rock but that was a nitrate trap.

I also had chamber 2 as a refugium but that did not gob well.

After 14 months with 1 inch sand, I started siphoning it out. Going to go barebottom now. The nutrients were just way too high. I have 45 lbs of rock and only 2 clowns in it.

[Ginu]

I don't have the experience with the 24g nano cube as i have a 34g aqua euro and I am fighting some major phosphate/nitrate issues which have caused some major hair algae.

Three days ago I got really upset and spent some $ and got a Two Little Fishies Phosban 150 reactor, new RO/DI filters and bunch of additives like BioFuel, MicroBacter7 (which I haven used) and some phosphate removing solution (cant think of the name)

I started dosing the BioFuel 3 days ago and within a day the algae on the back of the aquarium started to die and the algae in the tank is starting to show die-off as well not to mention the sand is almost back to being white.

I started out with phosphates at around 4-5ppm which is way too high and nitrates at a scary 40ppm. After about a day the nitrates spiked up to 160ppm (guessing from algae dieing) and I'm assuming they will stay quite high at around 20-40 until all the rock clears up of this hair crap algae.

Now going back to the thread question, I've noticed the skimmer is producing a lot more in chamber 1 than in chambers 2 or 3 and i am assuming this is because the water doesn't have enough time to filter through filter floss/chemipure/purigen and LR in my 1st two compartments; I'm also in the process of switching to a Tunze 9002 from the stock Euro Aqua nano skimmer, however the Tunze needs to be modified in order to fit in the back of the chambers as I don't feel the nano 50$ skimmers are good enough, they probably work well in maintaining the system but if something happens, they are not aggressive enough in removing enough skim mate to keep up with the bio-load.
I've been reading alot and most people seem to go with fairly empty chambers besides/pumps/Chemipure(i suggest getting the elite), filter floss(which should be changed every week) and some form of macro algae if you can contain it without getting in the pumps. Also it is much easier to keep the back cleaned if its on the empty side; I've read numerous cases in which some thick sludge collects in the rear chambers and it is a pita to clean if its not cleaned on regular basis.

Since I started dosing carbon, my nitrates dropped to 40 and phosphates .05-.1... I turned on the PhosBan a day after the dosing started and the phosphates are still dropping :)

I got a few water changes planned for this week 5g going in today and another 5g going in on Saturday or Sunday and hope to get those nitrates even lower.

Now the good part is that my ammonia and nitrites have always been dead on 0 which is good considering phosphates/nitrates.

My livestock consists of a pair of pair of clowns, cleaner wrasse, wheelers goby, bicolor bleny, cleaner shrimp, coral branded shrimp, peppermint shrimp, tiger pistol shrimp, sand dollar/snails/hermit crabs and various corals along with a huge anemone (clowns love this thing) and a flame scallop which I hope to live for a while as it is really cool.

http://oi39.tinypic.com/iwhnav.jpg