Should I ditch my Canister filter??

[irish rage]

Hey all,
I'm running a 55 gallon with about 50 lbs. of live rock, 4" sand bed, couple power heads, a Aqua C Remora Pro HOB Skimmer, and an Eheim Canister filter.
Current stock is 1 Coral Banded Shrimp, 1 Peppermint Shrimp, 1 Coral Beauty Angel, 2 True Percs, 1 Firefish, about 10 Blue Legged Hermits, 2 Turbos, and about 7 Nass.
My question is I am having problems keeping my Nitrates in an acceptable range and think the canister filter may be my problem. I don't run any floss or spounges in it but do have a layer of EHFI Mech and a layer of the EHFI Substrat for filtration/bio-filtration.
Tanks been up for 20 months now and all my other levels are perfect.
Should I just ditch the canister at this point or would this possibly throw my whole tank into a new cycle? Is it hurting my nitrate level or is there some benefit to running the canister? Any help or comments are appreciated.
Go Bears! :cheer:

 

[dragonzim]

I was running almost the exact same setup with a 75 gallon. I was also battling nitrates. I took the canister off and my nitrates dropped noticeably. I'd get some more live rock, maye another 20lbs or so and you should be good with just the rock and your powerheads for flow.

 

[yeldarbj]

I wouldn't be so quick to ditch it. I've got a similar setup on a 65 with a regular Remora and Filstar XP2. My nitrates were starting to creep up to around 20. I eventually ran the cannister empty for several weeks and didn't see any changes in the nitrate levels. I was doing 20% water changes just to maintain the nitrates between 15-20. I finally reloaded the cannister with Seagel & Purigen only, and the nitrates began to fall to less than 10 in a week without any water change. I think the Purigen makes a difference. I later added back a couple of foam filters and some Seachem Matrix (rock-like rubble for anaerobic bacteria). I really thought the foam filters made a big difference in my water clarity. Since then my nitrates have been below 5 without any water changes in weeks.
Try emptying the cannister of all media and throw in a 100ml bag of Purigen for starters. See what happens. The Purigen is rechargeable as well.

 

[scsinet]

Originally Posted by yeldarbj
Try emptying the cannister of all media and throw in a 100ml bag of Purigen for starters. See what happens. The Purigen is rechargeable as well.
I agree. There is no reason to remove the canister entirely unless you don't want it there for other reasons (noise, etc). You can remove the media from it and it will just provide water circulation and flow. It also provides a place to put things like activated carbon, chemicals (poly filter, purigen, cuprisorb, etc) if needed.

 

[xdave]

If you clean the mechanical filter media, ie the sponge and ceramic noodles, when you do water changes you should never have a nitrate problem because of your canister.

 

[ghettotang]

I would try to get a sump if I were you because then you can add some plant like caurlepa or chaeto to let it gorw more. This would help reduce your nitrate problem and you can add more live rock at the bottom and some cleaner clam also at the bottom of the sump this will help you also lower your nitrate problem. I also had problem with the canister filter. So what I did is I set-up the sump that my uncle gave to me and let it run the sump with my filter for about 2 month until I have bacteria grown into my sump. Then I took out my canister and my nitrate went down to zero and since then it stay zero. Another suggestion if you don't want to go this way is add some caurlepa or chaeto into your aquarium. I hope this suggestion might help you out.
Good Luck!!!

 

[wattsupdoc]

Any type of particulate collecting filter media needs to be cleaned periodically. The point of the filter is to trap particles wich have not yet decomposed so they can be removed before they turn into nitrates. IMO the bio filtration shouldnot be soley(sp) reliant on the filtration media. It lives there yes, but you should have substrate with enough surface area in the aquarium or in the "system" to support the aerobic bacteria without relying on the sponges etc. Then they may be cleaned frequently without harm to you're biofilter. And nitrates reduced as a result.

 

[cowfishrule]

most cannister filters provide a decent amount of water flow, plus the ability to house some media.
dont ditch it- run it with lr rubble or bio-max in it.