Originally Posted by Russy Pelican
Suppose it was a predator tank (I am setting one up for my clown trigger early next year). With wet/dry, in theory, even with great skimmers, you would have high nitrates, thus algae problems. Where does a wet/dry ever come in as being the optimum filtration system?
Nitrates are far less of a concern in a tank than ammonia. Predators are big eaters, and messy. Ammonia is a big problem. So a wet/dry, IMO, is preferable to quickly deal with that fatal problem.
Nitrate can be handled with water changes and with watching feeding. You can run a wet/dry with little or no nitrate issue. It is a matter of staying on top of cleaning and water changes. There is also no reason whatsoever you couldn't plumb in a refugium into the system for macro growth.