Hang on filter vs. canister

[Snappy]

Originally Posted by michika

I have a couple of Fluvals too and they are killing my tank. They collect nitrates like its nobody's business and for me its gotten to the point where its starting to impact my system and stress me out. Upsides though are they are easy to clean and maintain, and they work wonderfully for draining your tank for a water change!

Sometimes its rather hard to find particular medias though, seems like whenever I'm running low on something, everyone else is too!

I have a fluval 404 in conjunction with a uv sterilizer in my 130 gal and since I have about 250 lbs of live rock I let that do most of the work. I have only 1 tray about 1/2 full of media and all the others have only carbon. IME if you have a lot of rock it will filter quite well without being the nitrate factory the canister media becomes. I don't even have any foam in mine. This was suggested to me by some reefers here in Calgary and seems to be working quite well. (so far so good) I do a weekly or biweekly water change of about 10-15% add the regular alk/cal chems and my parameters seem to stay consistently in the range I am looking for. My personal thought is when in doubt add more live rock. For a complete list of what I am using I had a thread on the pictures forum called "my 130 gal tank shot"