Multiple Filtration Methods

[ppurcell]

Sorry, wrong forum. Can this be reposted to a more appropriate forum?

Greetings all,

I am setting up a new 75G reef and am using 5" of 1-2mm aragonite sand bed with a 1.25" plenum. Sitting on top of the sand bed, I have roughly 120-150lbs of base rock with minimal contact to the bed surface. (was LR, but was put into storage for around a year).

I also have a small 2 gallon wet/dry fed by an overflow box, followed by a double baffle for carbon bags before water enters the main section of the sump where I have a medium size protein skimmer of an unknown type. The sump is my old 55 gallon aquarium which I drilled and seems to be working adequately as I have 0Am/ 0Ni/ 0Na with a modest bio load.

So, after all the pre-amble, I would like to solicit opinions on two things.

1. Should the mechanical (except for very course mech) and chemical filtration before the protein skimmer be removed?

2. Is is inappropriate to use a wet/dry in tandom with a live sand bed? If so, what makes the two systems antagonistic?


Best regards,

Phillip Purcell