Skimmerless?

[hobogato]

how much sand do you have in your display? do you have a dsb in your fuge? if so, how deep?

i had cyano issues in my tank running a single beckett skimmer (very efficient) and 0TDS topoff/water change water as long as i had the 3" sand bed. i tried phosban, lots of macro algae, water changes (siphoning out the cyano). nothing worked. then, i did some reading about sand beds and found out that 3" isnt deep enough to function as nitrate remover and too deep to keep clean. the result is a detritus trap that increases nutrients in the water. once i siphoned all but about an inch of sand out and improved the rockwork to allow for better flow over the entire sand bed, the cyano went away.

my dsb half of the fuge has about 8" of sugar fine sand in it.

i have around 30 fish (mostly small wrasses, 6 med/lg tangs and a 3' eel). i clip in two 5"X10" sheets of nori per day. i feed small amounts of food (brine, mysis, krill, and bloodworms) four times a day - the equivalent of a 2"X2"X1" block of food per day. i also feed a small chunk of cyclopeze once or twice a week - about 1"X.5"X.5". i feed the eel specifically once a week (he eats small amounts every time i feed) as well - 5 shrimp or 8-10 rings of squid. since i took the skimmer offline, my tank has started a nightly plankton swarm that the corals really like. i have to clean the glass every two or three days, but it only has a light film in the most brightly lit spots after that amount of time.

the only mechanical filter i run is a carbon reactor with a small amount of carbon to remove some of the chemical warfare chemicals from the anemones and leather corals.

**disclaimer - my setup is not typical. i am not keeping overly sensitive corals. i am actually moving toward corals that like lots of food (non photosynthetic).