Skimmerless?? Anyone??Miracle Mud??

[Beverly]

Doug,

My three marine display tanks (28g H. whitei tank, 42g mixed soft/lps/sps hex reef, 72g softie reef) are skimmerless, sumpless and refugless.

Do weekly 15% water changes on them all. Prior to the water change, I clean the glass, then vigorously turkey baste the lr, and gently baste sandbed and corals, which clouds the tank up pretty good. When the tank clears in a hour or so, I remove the powerheads, clean them (detailed below), remove 15% of the water, then add the new water.

All three tanks have Hagen powerheads with quickfilter attachments filled with foam and each week the PHs are removed, broken down and cleaned in tapwater with a toothbrush (never used in anybody's mouth). Impeller chambers are cleaned with q-tips. An amazing amount of crud gets trapped between the parts of the PH, and weekly cleaning definitely makes them run more efficiently.

Foams get special treatment. I get a 2 litre container, fill it 1/4 full of outgoing changewater, and squeeze the living heck out of them. When the water gets dirty, I dump it and get more water, then squeezed them some more. I continue dumping the water until the foams are clean and the water is clear. Foams, even after only a week, pick up huge amounts of crud. And after the basting, even more crud is picked up and exported.

Never had cyano or other algae blooms in any of my tanks with this method, but do encourage the growth of various MA that has come in on the rock so they will suck up nitrate and phosphate.

HTH