What to do With a Eheim Canister Filter; GAC?

[Lbrewer34]

So after about 5 months I finally bought a protein skimmer. I was previously running an eheim classic canister filter with some type of lava rock (kinda look like coco puffs), a bag of charcoal, a few white filter pads, barrier reef's phosphate remover in a bag and another blue filter pad on top. I cant quite get my nitrates to 0 so i was looking at potential contributors. When i went to clean and switch out the carbon this week i saw a ton of detritus around the lava rock stuff. what I would like to do is remove everything except a few filter pads and run just activated carbon or other media (neo-zeo by brightwell maybe?) and some phosphate remover. I would like to run the medias without having them in a sock, and just have the filter pads keep the small particles out of the pump itself. Is this a bad idea? i was thinking the more contact time the water has with the largest surface are of the carbon should give the greatest filtration, and the same with the phosphate remover. I just don't know if this technique would require me to change the media more often to prevent leeching, or is just not a good idea in the first place. Also, would I really be loosing out on bio filtration by taking out that lava rock medium? Its ideas like this during spurts of insomnia that are the beginning of genius or mayhem, so with a little guidance the goal is for my wife to not come home to a tank full of dead fish/coral. here are the tank details:
65g display, 20g sump
65lb (roughly) live rock, 1 1/2 white sand bed
reef octo nwb110 (w/ mesh mod), eheim classic canister, 9w uv sterilizer
light bioload; 4 fish, 2 med acans, 1 small sun coral. some xenia, couple small kenya and an orange crush and a candycane and a few zoas. most everything has about 10 heads

 

[mojoreef]

To be honest I would not run the canister filter at all. It just become a collection point for detritus, which will promote nitrifing bacteria and thus nitrates. You have a sump I would just place the bags with the media you desire (gac/PR) at the input section of the sump and allow it to do its thing their. You should be getting some detritus settlement in the sump so from their you can just suck it out on a maintenance schedule.

Mojo