Lee, what kind of filtration do you use on your tanks?

[ralphie16]

Lee, I understand you have been keeping fish for many decades so I bet you've had quite a few different filtration techniques/equipment during the evolution of this hobby. Can you tell us a little about the different kinds of setups you had over the years and your overall impression of them as you moved on from one to the next. For example, did you ever use those wet-dry filters that were popular in the 90s? Did you hold your breath the first time you removed the bio balls and trust that the live rock would work? lol

[leebca]

That is quite a span of time, Ralphie.

My first marine aquarium was at the end of 1967. I got a 15 gallon aquarium with an undergravel filter, substrate and no decorations. I put a few invertebrates in it. I still didn't know anything about the purpose of a biological filter (as my LFS never explained it to me). All through my earlier freshwater days, I disliked the undergravel filter, so after a few weeks, I turned it off. The inhabitants quickly died.

The next few years my tanks were all undergravel filters, trying out different approaches to cut down on the maintenance. If you know those kinds of filters, their upkeep is a pain. When operating properly, they are both mechanical and biological.

As the number of tanks/volume grew I invested in larger piston pumps for air. Noticing green sheets of algae growing in my aquarium, I experimented with a kind of refugium under different lighting to grow algae.

After this, still with the undergravel filter came pumps that attached to the top of the riser tubes, rather than using airstones. That was a bonus since the airstones of the time only lasted a few weeks.

We had heard about the Europeans using skimmers, but thought it more of a joke than any benefit. What we were never actually shown was the skimmate that was coming out. Given that visual aid I think the US hobbyists would have begun using skimmers much sooner. Although we were moderately impressed with Eng's system and other 'natural' reef tank aquariums we also knew that these people could walk out their house and take water right from the ocean and use it to make water changes on a daily basis. The value of live rock hadn't hit home, yet.

I had a few aquariums at the time, so I gave the new concept a try. I was doing my own importing of marine life and got my collectors to send me live rock. It was real live rock. They collected it off a shallow reef, bagged it in water like fish, and air sent it to me.

In two converted aquariums, I put in the live rock, no undergravel filter, but both had a hang-on outside filter and my homemade refugium. Both had 1" of substrate. I filled in some space amongst the live rock with skeletal, bleached white corals. I put an airstone in every 10" or so and with large bubbles, kept the water moving. I just watched the live rock for two months. It was quite amazing. I began trying out different foods just to keep the live rock inhabitants alive. The life forms waxed and waned as Mother Nature took Her time finding the dominant life forms that got along with the environment. Lighting in those days was poor so many light-dependent life forms passed away.

I used natural sunlight later and had to combat a huge growth in nuisance algae, but more of the LR life forms survived longer.

I kept a log of test results (LaMotte test kits back in those days were considered the high-end test kits).

I still used and maintained a quarantine tank with a sponge filter. It proved to provide the needed circulation and biological filtration for fishes going through the process. I then began introducing fish slowly in one tank, quickly in the other tank. The fast-add tank, spiked in ammonia and nitrites from a bioload overload and the fish died. Much of the LR continued on.

Along with this, I was studying and performing experiments with marine fishes on grant monies from the aquaculture industry. They were bare tanks for the most part with sponge biological filters in operation.

Artificial salts were not top notch. . .yet. We were still using salts that came with a little bottle of liquid additive that had to be poured into the water at the time of makeup.

Books at the time were far and few between, when it came to ornamental marine fish keeping. Only a couple of magazines mentioned the hobby. The Marine Aquarist was about the most notable first all-marine magazine published (the size of Reader's Digest but only a couple of dozen pages).

The live rock with airstones was showing the build up of organics, which I could analyze in the lab at the time. I began to look for a skimmer and had to buy German brand skimmers for my tanks. The resultant water quality was much improved; bacterial count declines. But from my perspective, the bacterial count was not acceptable. A drop of ocean water shows about X bacteria. These tanks were showing in excess of 1000 to 10,000X that population.

I began to use a UV and the free bacteria count declined considerably. Still it was way above NSW and the life forms sensitive to this were showing the stress.

I got rid of the airstones (still hated them) and took the power heads from the undergravel filter risers and put them in the tank only not attached to a riser. This became my source of circulation and surface water movement.

The hang-on filter I made a transition into a sump and began the overflow circulation process which seemed optimal. I realized I could use gravity to mechanically filter the overflow water. I experimented with different substrates to augment the biological filtration of the live rock. I turned over all my tanks to live rock and started the FOWLR systems with different flow rates until I found the relative minimum acceptable to the way I keep/maintain these systems.

In my QT system, I used the bio-balls, noticed some down and upsides but stuck with them in my QT system, even until today. I stopped using the sponge filter.

Over the years I've tried different filtration media (chemical media) and still to this day try something new after carefully reviewing it. I have a reverse flow column for the experimental media, another reverse flow column to remove phosphates, and sock filters on the return water for mechanical filtration.

[ralphie16]

Thank you for taking the time to right such a detailed account. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.

So you use bioballs in your QT I see. So your fish tanks biological filtration is currently taken care of by either sand or live rock?

Do you ever experiement with plenums when the technique was first proposed?

[ralphie16]

Forgot to ask about chemical filtration. I see you use the upflow reactors for your carbon and phospahte remover now but were there chemical filters in use back in the day too or is this a somewhat recent use in the aquarium hobby?

[leebca]

My current marine system is FOWLR. There is plenty of surface area in the system to support the nitrifying bacteria and I'm sure they are everywhere, including the refugium, sump, plumbing, etc.

Never used a plenum. I had no urgent need to ever eliminate or severely reduce nitrates. My refugium has a deep sand bed, but even that is non-essential to a FOWLR system.

Chemical filtration was available to some extent to professional aquariums. Some became available to me, but I was more attune to leave well enough alone. Phosphates were always a challenge from very early on and that was one reason I tinkered with a refugium very early on. Now, I use a refugium to help with phosphates, but for other reasons, and leave phosphate control to chemicals.

[rjs5134]

Very interesting, i appreciate you sharing so much. Great question as well.