canister filter or power filter for a 30 gallon saltwater aquarium?

Question

im thinkin canister

Answer 1

Either one but Carl has a good point. Canister tend to be a nitrate factory and with inverts in the tank, this is something you want to keep fairly low. In your thirty gallon, are you planning on having a powerhead? The power filter tends to allow more water movement if you are not. If you are one of those people who tend to over feed...this may be the way to go. Brine shrimp that doesn't get eaten is a royal pain when it gets stuck on live rock and vacing off the sand.

It boils down to what you are willing to clean and up keep. I have run the power filters on my 30 salts with no protein skimmer and no problems. The canisters tend to be more work with a small tank than they are worth. Large tanks they seem to work well in fish only tanks.

Also, have you thought about a backpack w/protein skimmer? These work very well and are easily maintained and come pretty much complete.

What ever you choose, just remember you want the filter to turn over the water in your tank 3-5 times per hour.

Good luck and feel free to im or email with additional concerns.

Answer 2

canisters do a better job with chemical filtration but require more work to keep up and running. Power filters are the kings of biological filtration and require less maintenance. It depends on your needs if algae is a problem use canisters or if leftover food is causing problems. If you have many fish and they produce a lot of waste use a power with a bio-wheel. Or if you want the best of both use a emperor 280 bio-wheel or a penguin 200 bio-wheel by marineland. You also might want to look for a under gravel filter it has good biological and mechanical filtration for the chemical find a UGF that has a carbon media slot in the power had made for it.

Answer 3

If you are going with fish, I would recommend the canister filter.
If you are going with more invertebrates, I would recommend using a combination of a Power Filter (HOB), Protein Skimmer, Sponge, and/or Wet/dry.

Canister filters hold a lot of organic debris, unfortunately because of this they can become nitrate factories (especially if not cleaned (rinsed with de-chlorinated tap water).
I recommend the Via Aqua canister filters for value and reliability, but there are a lot of other goods ones as well (and some not so good too).

If you use a wet dry you can substitute bio balls with crumbled cured live rock (about 1"), this actually works better and helps with nitrates as well. You can also add this to the bottom of many power filters as well.

I would recommend reading this article about aquarium filters before making your final choice:
http://www.americanaquariumproducts.com/Aquarium_Filtration.html

And this article about marine basics:
http://www.americanaquariumproducts.com/Basic_Saltwater.html

Good Luck!

Answer 4

Definately canister. Both will do the job fine, but canisters hold more media, are more flexible in what they can hold, and the output design is much nicer and more versatile then the waterfall style.