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Originally Posted by Cichlids4Ever  I was under the impression tha enough Live Rock IS your natural biological filtration. Why waste money on a cannister? |
Although I'm personally a big fan of using live rock as a primary form of bio-filtration (and skimmers to reduce load on bio-filtration by removing organics from water column before they need to be filtered)... they frequently aren't the ONLY source of bio-filtration. Many folks also either run wetdry/bioballs, canisters, or fluidized bed reactors. Canisters also give the opportunity for encapsulating chemical filtration, ie loading them up with activated carbon. This is particularly important when keeping corals since chemical warfare isn't uncommon.
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Originally Posted by Cichlids4Ever Also, A protein skimmer and power heads are great for SW. I have never heard of a power head "eating" marine life....They are needed to move things around....just my opinion. |
Although powerheads are extremely cost efficient ways to create lots of flow, they can be very dangerous depending on what your keeping. Sea horses, sea cucumbers, and even certain anemones etc can be killed with them and have created a market for foam prefilters to put on powerhead strainers. Very small things like copepods wont normally be killed, but slower, delicate critters certainly can. Propeller designed powerheads aren't as dangerous since they strain their intake over a much larger area then impeller designed powerheads... which might contribute to why koralias, tunzes, and the like are very popular.
Heck, a few critters (like stingrays for example) can literally be driven crazy over time if ANY magnetic driven powerhead or return pump is used, and require direct drive external pumps because of how sensitive they are to signals in the water... but for the most part, 90%+ of critters available in the market are perfectly fine with hobby grade powerheads - in my opinion you'll need to get into much more niche stuff then normal mixed reefs to demand being particularly careful with that kind of equipment.
