# Filterless Reef System ... anyone?



## wildexpressions (May 3, 2010)

I operate a 65 gallon mixed reef system with no sump, no refugium, no reactors and no protein skimmer.

The only equipment is a DIY water top off system, 2 x 1600 gph powerheads hooked to a wavemaker, a 36 inch x 4 bulb T5HO retrofit kit and an Aquaclear 500 HOB that is filled with filter floss as a particulate filter. It also gives me a place to put an Algone pouch and a bag of carbon which I only use after I have been moving stuff around and hence annoying the corals. I generally leave the carbon in for 2 weeks

I have a very wide variety of corals including a variety of leathers, LPS, SPS and zoa/paly's. Live stock is limited to a Yellow tang, 3 Cardinals (2 PJ's and 1 Striped, a Starry Algae Blennie, 2 Neon Gobies, 1 adult Engineer Goby, a Black SeaHare, Coral Banded Shrimp, Harliquin Shrimp and a variety of crabs (Emerald, Scarlet, Electric Blue) and snails (Tectus, Super Tongan Nassarius, Asteria, Cerith)

The system has been running for 2.5 years and it is thriving. Nitrates are generally unmeasurable but occasionally I'll see a spike of 10 ppm or so. Such spikes are minor and I have never noticed any issues from them. I do 5 or so water changes a year of 10 to 15%. I've never tore the tank down or cleaned it other than the front pane of glass of course.

There is very little traditional live rock in the system as the center piece and corner pieces are man made rock that was coated in a 2 part 85% solids by volume epoxy. Essentially they were coated in plastic. There might be a total of 15 lbs of actual live rock.

My primary filtration is the DSB which covers approx 2/3rds of the bottom of the tank and it is very alive.

I don't know of anyone local doing anything similar and I was wondering if there are any others out there. I'd love to hear details and see pictures.

Here are a couple of pictures of the tank. The first three show it sitting there waiting for water. The mopani wood was just put in there to give it some interest while it sat empty. The tank ended up sitting there longer than expected as I ended up in a coma for a while and had to learn to walk again.

























This picture is a few moths old and I have made some changes since then so I'll take some new pictures and update the thread later.


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## Flexin5 (Nov 12, 2011)

i don't have much in the filtration department. just a aquaclear 110 on my 10 gal with filter floss and carbon. i do however have alot of live rock, about 18-20lbs and i do water changes of about 20% every week. no skimming, no sump etc.


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## wildexpressions (May 3, 2010)

Flexin5 said:


> i don't have much in the filtration department. just a aquaclear 110 on my 10 gal with filter floss and carbon. i do however have alot of live rock, about 18-20lbs and i do water changes of about 20% every week. no skimming, no sump etc.


18 to 20 lbs is definitely a lot of live rock for a 10 gal. Do you do the water changes to control nitrates? I've never tried to run a tank that small on a DSB. Have you heard of anyone doing it?


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## advanced reef aquatics (Apr 20, 2009)

Just wondering why you wouldnt use a skimmer?
R.o. Water?


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## wildexpressions (May 3, 2010)

advanced reef aquatics said:


> Just wondering why you wouldnt use a skimmer?
> R.o. Water?


I guess for me the question is why would I use one when the system gives no indication of requiring one? People just assume they need a skimmer and many so called experts publish that it is essential requirement, not so.

I use the minimum technology that the system dictates and in the case of the 65 gal there simply is no need for anything. The system was setup around the DSB and it functions exactly as I expected it to.

I've never tried a DSB on a stick farm but I have no doubt I it would work just as well. This system is not SPS heavy but there are Purple Nana, Green Slimmer, Purple Haze Monti, Purple Tip Digitata and a variety of other ends and odds. They are not just alive, they are colored up and growing well.

I guess an alternative answer to your question is that if I used a skimmer it is possibe that things might grow a bit faster. It is a relatively crowded 65 gallon aquarium so how fast do I want things to grow? Some items like the Purple Tip Digitata already grows faster than I can sell the frags.

I'm not anti skimmer ( or anti anything for that matter). I use skimmers on my other systems and in some cases I skim very aggressively. My 300 gal frag system pulls approx 10 gallons of skim mate a week ( I skim aggressively partially as a means of doing water changes) plus it has sulfur bead, carbon and phosban reactors.

That frag system also has a massive DSB that I have been heavily seeding and over the next year I expect I will be able to slowly reduce the level of dependence on the skimmer and reactors. Right now though it is a new system (less than a month since setup) and it has approx 1000 frags in it as well several relatively large anemones and various critters so it needs all of the help it can get to keep the nitrates below 10ppm

I am on city water and I do filter the water. I use a R.O. system with no R.O. membrane installed but the particulate filter, a carbon filter and resin filter are changed as needed.


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## nfamusic (Dec 19, 2012)

On the first picture I thought thats an interesting rock set up, I wasn't sure if I liked it....... but with it fully stocked, I must say WOW that looks amazing.
Now I want some rocks like that!!!!!!!


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## advanced reef aquatics (Apr 20, 2009)

I don't use a skimmer for growth, but i do use them for removal of dissolved compounds, There no way of keeping NA and po4 to a minimum without using massive amounts of ferric oxide or other nutrient lowering devices.
The tap water in combination with no skimming has been proven to be detrimental to a reef, success sometimes is in the eye of the beholder,
Otherwise everyone that uses a skimmer has been duped by the the experts, myself included.
Many with a 29g bio cube don't use a skimmer, first of all they don't make a good one, which is probably the main reason. Its easier on a smaller system to control Na and po4, never mind heavy metal compounds etc, found in tap water.
I've had dsb systems of 6" or more when it was the norm 15 years ago, now we see the benefit of not employing one in the main display tank, much more effective and safer using a remote dsb.
Proper husbandry, skimmer and r.o. water will mitigate and far out weigh what a dsb will ever accomplish,
Ill play devils advocate, my display in store uses no dsb, no fuge at all, no mechanical filtration, no ferric oxide, yet i have 0 na and 0 po4,
Green star polyps, leathers and mushrooms will thrive in either a nutrient heavy system or not, sps will color up better in nutrient poor tanks,
Im just curious as to why you wouldn't use a device made to make our lives easier.


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## wildexpressions (May 3, 2010)

nfamusic said:


> On the first picture I thought thats an interesting rock set up, I wasn't sure if I liked it....... but with it fully stocked, I must say WOW that looks amazing.
> Now I want some rocks like that!!!!!!!


The rock is pretty easy to make. I've been making and using it for over 20 years and there are plenty of tutorials online including a pretty popular one I published 15 years or so ago. Don't let the fact that I mentioned coating these ones with 2 part epoxy indicate that you need to do that as I normally don't. I just happened to have a bag of architectural cement on hand and didn't wish to wait for it to cure as far as the ph was concerned.

Sally Joe and LeRoy have some good tutorials over at garf.org. They have been commercially making and selling something they call agrocrete for 20 years or so or just do a search on agrocrete and you eill come up with a ton of hits.

I used to make concrete structures for fresh water tanks as well
Here is one of my old freshwater wall tank in my livingroom









Here are a few other fresh water ones

























The only real difference in making freshwater vs saltwater rock is that I purposely used silica based sand in the fresh water one to encourage diatom growth for the nice patina it gave but in salt water you want to avoid silica based anything as diatoms need no encouragment... just the opposite in fact.

One of the cool things about it is that you can hide all of your plumbing in the structure by embeding pvc pipes in them. I also often add cpvc piping though out the structure as a way of adding hidden return jets that can be powered by powerheads, canister return or sump pump depending on the setup.

Bottomline is spend some time in google and go for it. It is a lot of fun.


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## 50seven (Feb 14, 2010)

wildexpressions said:


> Bottomline is spend some time in google and go for it. It is a lot of fun.


+1 Couldn't agree more!!!!!!

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2


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## Flexin5 (Nov 12, 2011)

wildexpressions said:


> 18 to 20 lbs is definitely a lot of live rock for a 10 gal. Do you do the water changes to control nitrates? I've never tried to run a tank that small on a DSB. Have you heard of anyone doing it?


i do it to remove nitrates altho i've never had any dectectable trates but to also replenish trace elements since it's stocked pretty good (for a 10 gallon)

I started out with a deep(er) sand bed but since i used sugar fine sand over a little more than a year that it's been running; alot of it has ended up in my filter, i wouldn't consider it deep anymore, about the thinckness of a frag plug.


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## wildexpressions (May 3, 2010)

nice little tank! Obviously you have found a system that works for you and that is the key to this hobby. I wouldn't mind better closer pictures.

I've tried to do small tanks but I always give up. Had a 10 gal on my desktop until it became embarrassing and I removed it 

DSB's fine sand tend to get shallower over time for a few reasons but one of them is that the sand very slowly dissolves and/or breaks down. That is one of the issues with maintaining them. Over a period of years, as the bed gets shallower, it gets less effective. 

In small tanks a DSB is apparently usually only 3 inches or so. I have no first hand experience to back that but Bob Fenner has written several articles on it some of which can be found over at WetWebMedia.com. Julian Sprung has also written an article which I believe can be found at advancedaquarist.com Both are big proponents of the technique and Julian has even done some long term studies following traditional scientific methodologies that he published.


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## Flexin5 (Nov 12, 2011)

thankyou 

over time with re-directing powerheads, adding coral, inverts, the sugar sand just gets blown around and picked up and ends up in the filter, aswell as wearing away. i love the look of it but for my next tank that i'm building right now it will be coarser sand for sure.

as for the protien skimmer subject, i don't think any reef tank needs a skimmer if you think about it, but you need a way to extract waste. this could be done with water changes but it's not very practical. on a bigger tank, doing 20-30% water changes every week to keep nitrates down and remove waste is a big task not to mension expensive. on a smaller tank it's alot easier to do that.

these are the most recent pics, still from a couple of months ago tho. things are pretty much the same but i've added some coral here and there.





































a bit older


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## wildexpressions (May 3, 2010)

love the pictures. I'm a light weight with the camera but I'm getting better.


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## wildexpressions (May 3, 2010)

So over the last two days I did an experiment. There has never been a protein skimmer hooked to this system in the 2.5 years it has been running. After being asked why I gave it some thought. 

I mean I know that I don't believe it needs one but as I typed that reply I couldn't help but ask how I know. Well I know because after 2 years studying to be a environmental chemical engineer and 5 years working in the pool/spa industry I know what quality water is and after 32 years of aquarium keeping I know what healthy live stock looks like .....while that answer satisfies me it didn't seem to be a good answer for someone else.

I decided I could not confidently answer that question with out actually hooking up a skimmer and running it for a day or two so I did. 

I took a running skimmer off another system any hooked it up to this system. 

It started foaming almost immediately but in 12 hours it only generated around 1/3 cup of very light skim mate. So I decided to crank it up and I setup the 10 gal bucket I use to catch skim mate and cranked the skimmer up to the point it was seriously aerating my aquarium and let it run. It barely collected anything over those 10 hours. Literally a negligible amount. 

I have a SWC cone skimmer sitting around and today or tomorrow I'm going to do another experiment. It has been about 2 months since I've done a water change so I'm going to do 15%. I'm going to keep that water and place it in a bucket and set the SWC in the bucket and essentially continuously recycle the water though the skimmer for a day and see what I get. I'll take some pictures and post the results.

I'm curious to see what I get.


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## wildexpressions (May 3, 2010)

Here are a couple of better pictures of the aquarium.
































































Pretty much full grown at 1.5 inches of pee and vinegar lol, there are two of them in the tank and they hate each other. I had read that they school so I bought 5 more and they did school for a week and looked WICKED ... but they turned on each other until there was only two.


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## advanced reef aquatics (Apr 20, 2009)

how are your po4 and na levels Steve?
No one is arguing the corals look healthy,
Keep us posted.


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## wildexpressions (May 3, 2010)

advanced reef aquatics said:


> how are your po4 and na levels Steve?
> No one is arguing the corals look healthy,
> Keep us posted.


Phosphates are a tad high but nothing to get excited about. Na? Sodium? Not sure what you mean by Na but I'm assuming it is a regional or online slang for Alkalinity? I don't know but I just did my weekly tests and the results are pretty consistent week to week.

silica 0.02
phosphate 0.12 - 
ph 8.15 
Alk 3.5 m/l 
Calcium 480
Nitrate ~5-10ppm
Nitrite - 0
Ammonia - 0
Salinity - 0.026

I unfortunately have used up my Mg test kit so I can not be certain of the cause of the low PH but I added a few capfuls of Aquavitro Balance to the top up water and will wait on the arrival of a Mg test kits before doing anything more. Generally I don't mess with PH but it has been slowly drifting down over the last 6 months so it is time to address it.

Seeing the phosphate level is creeping up I have tossed a small bag phosban in the system. By next weeks test I expect that will be 0.05 or so.

Total maintenance on this setup is typically under 1/2 hour a week and most weeks it is under 15 minutes. There is little maintenance becasue there is no equipment to maintain...well that is not quite true, it takes longer if we factor in the time it takes to do the tests each week but other than that

I've been too busy to do part two of the skimmer test but I will get to it sooner or later as I am curious.


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## nso_168 (Sep 22, 2011)

Very interesting topic though I think the subject heading is a little misleading


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## nso_168 (Sep 22, 2011)

nso_168 said:


> Very interesting topic though I think the subject heading is a little misleading


Boss came, hit the wrong panic button ... Here it is again.

... misleading because you do have a filter, rock and sand, etc. I believe everything will go to equilibrium, and without fancy external stuff, the equilibrium state will be more stable IMO. I don't have a reef system, but a FOLWR with no protein skimmer, sump. I do have a cannister, but I hardly clean it (4 - 5 months). I am careful not to overfeed, I do have a resonable number of livestock in the 50G (2 angels, 2 tangs, 1 clown and 1 goby). The system has been very stable in the past 4+ years. And, I got away from regular water changes. Forgot when was the last change, probably before X'mas, and typically I change around a bucket. I do fill up with RO and added Marine Buffer. You may ask, but no, I don't have any water parameters to show because I don't measure them.
It does have some green hair algae, but the sand is pretty white. BTW, the tangs eat some of the algae, but only when they are hungry.

The tank is quite basic compared with most, but I don't have to do much work on it that is important  Over the years, it does save $$$ and carbon emission, that's important too.

I also interested to see if anyone doing the same too? I guess this is what people do many years ago?


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## rickcasa (Dec 7, 2011)

nfamusic said:


> On the first picture I thought thats an interesting rock set up, I wasn't sure if I liked it....... but with it fully stocked, I must say WOW that looks amazing.
> Now I want some rocks like that!!!!!!!


+1 Op obviously is a man of vision. Can you tell me what you used to make the rock? And why you coated it with epoxy and not left it porous. I'm very interested because I want to build a rock floor to elevate the live rock to prevent detritus build up.


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## koop (Dec 24, 2012)

I've been watching this tank grow for the last 2 years or so and can say that it has never had a skimmer on it and he has had only small issues and because of this setup I run a 100 gallon with just a fx5 know ware near as much coral but am getting there I love this tank 

all it comes down to is a KISS ( KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID ) 

sorry I haven't been by lately steve live a has just been to busy


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## wildexpressions (May 3, 2010)

rickcasa said:


> +1 Op obviously is a man of vision. Can you tell me what you used to make the rock? And why you coated it with epoxy and not left it porous. I'm very interested because I want to build a rock floor to elevate the live rock to prevent detritus build up.


thanks

the rock is made of cement. The reason I coated it with epoxy is twofold.
I had a bag of white architectural cement laying around I decide to use it up on this project. That stuff mixes up like plaster so it really is not porous to begin with. Also, it is far worse than normal cement as far as ph and that is the second reason. 
Not only does architectural cement take longer to cure to get the ph down but I had no place to cure pieces that large so I needed a different solution. I had the epoxy on hand so I used it and had water in the tank a week or so after finishing the rock work.

If I had a running stream/river in my back yard where I could put pieces this large while they cured I wouldn't have bothered with the epoxy.

As a bonus to the epoxy is that that coraline grows like crazy on it.


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## wildexpressions (May 3, 2010)

koop said:


> I've been watching this tank grow for the last 2 years or so and can say that it has never had a skimmer on it and he has had only small issues and because of this setup I run a 100 gallon with just a fx5 know ware near as much coral but am getting there I love this tank
> 
> all it comes down to is a KISS ( KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID )
> 
> sorry I haven't been by lately steve live a has just been to busy


no prob, I've been all messed up in the shop anyway. This restructuring of the company(s) is taking much longer than I expected. The one coral system that is operating has almost 1000 frags in it so far with room for maybe another 400 so it is working. just got to get the other systems built 

Stop in any time and keep an eye on the website as I'll be putting a lot of hardware and dry goods on blow our pricing very shortly.


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## wildexpressions (May 3, 2010)

nso_168 said:


> Boss came, hit the wrong panic button ... Here it is again.





> ... misleading because you do have a filter, rock and sand, etc. I believe everything will go to equilibrium, and without fancy external stuff, the equilibrium state will be more stable IMO. I don't have a reef system, but a FOLWR with no protein skimmer, sump. I do have a cannister, but I hardly clean it (4 - 5 months). I am careful not to overfeed, I do have a resonable number of livestock in the 50G (2 angels, 2 tangs, 1 clown and 1 goby). The system has been very stable in the past 4+ years. And, I got away from regular water changes. Forgot when was the last change, probably before X'mas, and typically I change around a bucket. I do fill up with RO and added Marine Buffer. You may ask, but no, I don't have any water parameters to show because I don't measure them.
> It does have some green hair algae, but the sand is pretty white. BTW, the tangs eat some of the algae, but only when they are hungry.
> 
> The tank is quite basic compared with most, but I don't have to do much work on it that is important  Over the years, it does save $$$ and carbon emission, that's important too.
> ...


Yeah the title is misleading to some degree but it is accurate in the context of the conversation I am trying to initiate.

I do test a lot and am a firm believer in it. I test daily with Tetra test strips and then weekly with Seachems Multitest kits. I have run canisters on numerous salt water systems and currently am using a canister to pump the water from the bottom tanks up 7 ft to the top tanks on my frag system. It is a big canister filled with (approx 12 liters) of Seachems Matrix which is a product I've been using .... for ever. I sealed that canister up around 2 years ago and have never opened it since and I have no intention of cracking it open unless the water flow drops.

I am a firm believer that moderate stock levels, light feedings and stable water is the key to a simple and easy aquarium. There obviously is a lot more to it but those fundamentals will allow a hobbyist to stretch the rest of the rules quite a ways.


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