Making the Switch to All Natural Filtration

As I said in a previous post concerning my nitrate levels, some of the difficulty may be from artificial filter materials.  So, on Saturday hubby and I went to our favorite LFS, ReefCulture and bought some Chaeto algae (read more here on Chaeto Algae). 

A side from that, we also bought about a pound of live rock rubble.  The rubble will go into the bottom of the fuge to act as more biological filtration like its larger intact cousins in the display tank. 

Here you can see the rubble at the bottom. The squiggly stuff is the algae.

After coming home, I immediately chucked the old stuff since I already modded the AC70 for the purpose of housing algae (here). 

Chucking the old stuff.

And here is our new set up:

The bag is full of carbon and is the only artificial filtration in the tank. 

I'm going to let it go for a couple weeks before testing my nitrate levels.  We'll see how the Chaeto does.  My next challenge however, is lighting.

LIGHTING CHAETO ALGAE

Lighting the algae isn't too specialist.  However, I thought I'd make a quick little blurb about it. 
From what I have read, Chaeto algae needs to be on a reverse lighting schedule.  When you display tank's lights are off, your Chaeto needs to be on.  This ensures that your algae is working 24/7 sucking nitrates and all the nasty stuff out.  It'll still be growing during the day as well if it catches over flow lighting from the display like mine will.

Chaeto does not need specialized lighting, however my Rio Mini Suns may not be powerful enough to penetrate to the bottom.  So, we're toying with the idea of a compact reading lamp.  Like I said, it doesn't need any specialized lighting to grow so I'm not concerned with needing extra aquarium lighting.