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Wet/Dry detritus traps?


Ben Broadfoot

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I'm considering starting an African Cichlid tank. I've had Discus before, and currently have a marine tank running. But as I consider filtration for a new tank it seems that wet/dry filters are still popular in the African Cichlid world. They've been abandoned for a while in the Marine world as fully submerged media (in the form of live rock) handles all of the biological filtration needed. The dry components of the wet/dry sumps are seen as simply a home for detritus.

Are there people running sumps just full of submerged media without the dry section? Isn't oxygenation sufficiently addressed via a weir/overflow?

Thanks for your wisdom, Ben.

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The tank that I have sumps on all have submerged media. The sumps I've seen using wet/dry seem very clear of detritus where as my wet submerged media is always covered in stuff which makes the water very dirty when disturbed.

Other than that I can not really comment.

 

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37 minutes ago, mjoconr said:

The tank that I have sumps on all have submerged media. The sumps I've seen using wet/dry seem very clear of detritus where as my wet submerged media is always covered in stuff which makes the water very dirty when disturbed.

Other than that I can not really comment.

 

You've made my point for me haven't you? Wouldn't the detritus be stuck in the dry section of the sump? Whereas if it's floating around freely on the submerged media you can remove it every waterchange as it's suspended in the water column.

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as I say the wet/dry seem to stay very clean, all my wet only seem to get very dirty. That being said I've only every seen wet/dry as I've never run one on the grounds of there noisy.

All my new tanks are Hamburger Matten Filter (HMF) type with HydroPure units for extra support. The only change I make to the HMF is I use electric pumps not air pumps. (again for the noise control)

 

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I have started using a filter sock on the outlet to the sump due to amount detritus that was building up in hard to reach palces despite having filter wool above the media. I find that I need to clean the filter sock about once per week depending on how heavy i was feeding. The sump has been significantly cleaner since incorporating the filter sock. I would ideally like to use both a pre filter sock and a trickle filter but the current sump setup means i can have either or not both. 

 

 

 

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I have a metal downpipe for my overflow and even with a durso the water rushing down the sides was noisy so I rolled up some shade cloth and put that in it. After a year it has hardly anything stuck to it, although I don't have plants, and it's quiet without any capping/durso.

It's not really wet/dry being under constant fast flow, but an idea to consider for sump design if you have the pipe width, to get more aerobic bacteria going or reduce noise.

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