yes. But I know people who have been using for 13-14 years going strong. So i thought why not. The ammonia and nitrites are in a safe zone. The fish themselves are doing fine. This thread was more to gain knowledge. Also one sub question. Do albino oscars' tails really get black with incraesed ammonia?
Media quantity
- Thread starter Aalok Joshi
- Start date
Just about perfect and I agree on media.Yes. I was of the same opinion that the bacteria couldn't care less if the media was ADA or Eheim or any brand. What I read in some articles was tht the media made by good brands tends to last longer. As in it clogs up at a later date as compared to locally made ceramic rings or bars. Other than that There was no reason for me to go for ADA or any brand for that matter. Because I believe most of it is a marketing myth.
The ammonia and nitrite is, as i have mentioned earlier is, 0 ppm. I do big water changes for HITH specifically. I want to keep the water as fresh as it is possible for me manually. The nitrates also are at 0 ppm.
People sometimes quote his 'aquarium science' blog as though it was the Encyclopedia Britannica. It's not. It's the opinions of one aquarist, a former chemist, who has done his share of reading on the subject, but is not a biologist or aquaculture scientist. So while his site may be a convenient starting point for some people I prefer doing my own research in aquaculture and science literature and sources like the publications of the University of Florida's aquaculture department. Also, in practice his opinions don't supersede my own many years of success.
There are a lot of theories, opinions, and preferences for filtration, media, etc., including how long media lasts. To me they're just opinions. After doing it different ways and getting the same good results I've concluded no one has THE single cosmic truth of a formula for filtration. The bottom line is the bottom line-- 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite, low nitrates, and water clear enough to suit your tastes. (I want clear looking water but I don't obsess over it or keep adding large filters until I get that last .001 percent clarity.)
I suspect your 0 nitrates has as a lot to do with your daily water changes, but my thought would be if I'm getting good results with 2 kg for 2 oscars, why not start by adding another kg for the third, then monitor whether you want to increase water changes?
I really wouldn't do three oscars in a 120 gal tank anyway, especially if it's less than 6 ft long, but that's just my opinion.
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Yes. But I have seen people use without a problem for 13-14 years. So I thought why not. This thread was more to gain knowledge. about the quantity of media required to actually clear up the water rather than just ammonia oxidisation. The ammonia and nitrite are zero. The fish are doing fine. One sub question. Do albino oscars' tails really get black outlines due to increased ammonia? I have read it in some articles online.
Well the bio media is just that, for bio filtration, not water clarity, the mechanical media such as sponges, flosses, polishing pads, filter socks, pre filters, and many others, are water clarifies the water and helps prevent your bio media from clogging.
I COMPLETELY agree with you on the experience part. There are just ways. And each one of us learns it in his or her own trajectory. I never subscribe to the ' my way or the highway' approach. So what you are stating here is that water clarity sould be a personal choice. Not....NOT A DEFACTO standard. Which I completely subscribe to. My tanks are MINE. They are not for giving visual pleasure to anyone except me. So if my fish do fine and I am happy...then the rest of it becomes irrelevant. Even i don't obsess over that seemingly floating in the air thing, which chemical filtration will give you. I would rather my water and fish and plants be healthy.
I was under the impression that aquariumscience.org is website run by multiple people.
To be honest my aquarium is 5 ft by 2 ft by 2 ft. In India, we don't have huge houses always and space becomes a real issue. And as a fellow hobbyist you would understand MTS.
So I did dimensions which I could best fit in my bedroom. So in spite of knowing and realising, I went ahead and put 3 of them. But I try my BESTEST BEST to give them clean water, even though it gets demanding sometimes. i never compromise on the water quality. i haven't missed a single daily water change in the 16 months that I have had them. I will definitely put in a kilo of extra media and see how it goes. The top smileys were wrongly inserted.
I COMPLETELY agree with you on the experience part. There are just ways. And each one of us learns it in his or her own trajectory. I never subscribe to the ' my way or the highway' approach. So what you are stating here is that water clarity sould be a personal choice. Not....NOT A DEFACTO standard. Which I completely subscribe to. My tanks are MINE. They are not for giving visual pleasure to anyone except me. So if my fish do fine and I am happy...then the rest of it becomes irrelevant. Even i don't obsess over that seemingly floating in the air thing, which chemical filtration will give you. I would rather my water and fish and plants be healthy.
I was under the impression that aquariumscience.org is website run by multiple people.
To be honest my aquarium is 5 ft by 2 ft by 2 ft. In India, we don't have huge houses always and space becomes a real issue. And as a fellow hobbyist you would understand MTS.
A certain amount of media will oxidise the ammonia in water. But different quantity of media will also make the water clearer. That was what this thread was about. Figuring out the quantity of bio media which clears up water. Mechanical filtration and its uses are and should be known to any half decent hobbyist.
Okay, here it is: the Cosmic Truth that answers all biomedia questions...are you ready? Sit down...
Yeah, yeah, I know it's really not, but I just treat it as if it were and it seems to work for me.
As stated by
duanes
and others, biomedia is nothing more than a substrate for your beneficial bacteria to live on. That's it, period. So, really, the only ways that one biomedium can be "better" than any other is if it provides more surface area per unit volume (allowing the use of a smaller quantity), or is cheaper, or lighter, or clogs less easily, or is easier to rinse clean. Fancy high-zoot boutique media like the one pictured above sometimes excel in most of these areas...but in other cases they actually fall far short of other choices.
Stating that you are using Xkg of media, i.e. measuring the weight of the stuff, is literally meaningless because it gives no indication of the surface area. There are a few useful charts online that compare the available surface area per unit volume of various types of media; they're easy to find...if I found them, anyone can!...and they are very interesting and eye-opening reading.
If you are using one of those devilish canister filters, your available space for biomedia, or any media, is relatively small so you need a medium with a high surface area per unit volume. One of the many advantages of sumps is that they have relatively huge amounts of space, allowing the use of larger amounts of media which in turn frees you up to use types that may not have as much surface area per unit volume.
Media like pumice, ceramics, etc. rely upon their porous structure to increase their surface area...but are also more subject to clogging as the fine pores fill up with old dead bacteria and other organic matter. And once they are clogged, they are more difficult to clean by simple rinsing, as the small pores and passageways within the medium restrict the flow of water through them to clean them. These media also tend to be pretty heavy, making them more awkward and difficult to remove for cleaning. And some of them are very expensive, thanks to the successful marketing that makes them seem far better than they are.
Media like plastic pot scrubbers, bioballs/K1, and...my personal favourite...plastic shotgun shell wads, don't have as much surface are per unit volume, but they can be insanely cheap, they last literally forever, they are extremely light in weight making their removal for cleaning very easy, and their non-porous structure means they rinse clean in a snap.
They have only two real disadvantages. First: their relatively smaller surface area means that a larger quantity is needed. And second: they aren't "cool". It's impossible to point at a mesh bag full of pot scrubbers if you want to impress a gear head.
Don't forget one important point: the amount of bacteria your filter supports is not something that you can increase simply by adding more and more biomedia. The bacterial population is limited by the available food, which of course depends entirely upon the bioload in the tank. If you don't increase the bioload, adding more biomedia simply spreads the same population of bacteria over a larger area. So all you really need is "enough" surface area; in terms of filtration, more is not necessarily better. And if you experiment with it you will find that "enough" is actually a surprisingly small amount. I like to have far more biomedia than I actually "need" for a given tank, as it allows for easy removal of portions of it to kick-start new tanks when needed.
And as stated by others above...biomedia isn't intended to make water clear. That's the purview of mechanical media, and the better a job they do, the clearer the water AND the longer the biomedia can go without clogging. IMHO, the all-time "best" combination bio/mech medium would be some sort of sponge like Poret, but if that's all you use it is less convenient to keep it physically clean and rinsed out. Much better to separate bio and mech into two separate media in two separate filter compartments to maximize access and ease of maintenance.
Yeah, yeah, I know it's really not, but I just treat it as if it were and it seems to work for me.
As stated by
duanes
and others, biomedia is nothing more than a substrate for your beneficial bacteria to live on. That's it, period. So, really, the only ways that one biomedium can be "better" than any other is if it provides more surface area per unit volume (allowing the use of a smaller quantity), or is cheaper, or lighter, or clogs less easily, or is easier to rinse clean. Fancy high-zoot boutique media like the one pictured above sometimes excel in most of these areas...but in other cases they actually fall far short of other choices.Stating that you are using Xkg of media, i.e. measuring the weight of the stuff, is literally meaningless because it gives no indication of the surface area. There are a few useful charts online that compare the available surface area per unit volume of various types of media; they're easy to find...if I found them, anyone can!...and they are very interesting and eye-opening reading.
If you are using one of those devilish canister filters, your available space for biomedia, or any media, is relatively small so you need a medium with a high surface area per unit volume. One of the many advantages of sumps is that they have relatively huge amounts of space, allowing the use of larger amounts of media which in turn frees you up to use types that may not have as much surface area per unit volume.
Media like pumice, ceramics, etc. rely upon their porous structure to increase their surface area...but are also more subject to clogging as the fine pores fill up with old dead bacteria and other organic matter. And once they are clogged, they are more difficult to clean by simple rinsing, as the small pores and passageways within the medium restrict the flow of water through them to clean them. These media also tend to be pretty heavy, making them more awkward and difficult to remove for cleaning. And some of them are very expensive, thanks to the successful marketing that makes them seem far better than they are.
Media like plastic pot scrubbers, bioballs/K1, and...my personal favourite...plastic shotgun shell wads, don't have as much surface are per unit volume, but they can be insanely cheap, they last literally forever, they are extremely light in weight making their removal for cleaning very easy, and their non-porous structure means they rinse clean in a snap.
They have only two real disadvantages. First: their relatively smaller surface area means that a larger quantity is needed. And second: they aren't "cool". It's impossible to point at a mesh bag full of pot scrubbers if you want to impress a gear head.
Don't forget one important point: the amount of bacteria your filter supports is not something that you can increase simply by adding more and more biomedia. The bacterial population is limited by the available food, which of course depends entirely upon the bioload in the tank. If you don't increase the bioload, adding more biomedia simply spreads the same population of bacteria over a larger area. So all you really need is "enough" surface area; in terms of filtration, more is not necessarily better. And if you experiment with it you will find that "enough" is actually a surprisingly small amount. I like to have far more biomedia than I actually "need" for a given tank, as it allows for easy removal of portions of it to kick-start new tanks when needed.
And as stated by others above...biomedia isn't intended to make water clear. That's the purview of mechanical media, and the better a job they do, the clearer the water AND the longer the biomedia can go without clogging. IMHO, the all-time "best" combination bio/mech medium would be some sort of sponge like Poret, but if that's all you use it is less convenient to keep it physically clean and rinsed out. Much better to separate bio and mech into two separate media in two separate filter compartments to maximize access and ease of maintenance.
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I understand. Different situation there, not always easy to keep some of the larger fish taken for granted in some other places, but people make it work. That's the thing with an international forum, you can't always impose what you're used to on everyone else.
To be honest my aquarium is 5 ft by 2 ft by 2 ft. In India, we don't have huge houses always and space becomes a real issue. And as a fellow hobbyist you would understand MTS.
First things first. FOLLOWING YOU. Respect.Okay, here it is: the Cosmic Truth that answers all biomedia questions...are you ready? Sit down...
Yeah, yeah, I know it's really not, but I just treat it as if it were and it seems to work for me.
As stated by
Stating that you are using Xkg of media, i.e. measuring the weight of the stuff, is literally meaningless because it gives no indication of the surface area. There are a few useful charts online that compare the available surface area per unit volume of various types of media; they're easy to find...if I found them, anyone can!...and they are very interesting and eye-opening reading.
If you are using one of those devilish canister filters, your available space for biomedia, or any media, is relatively small so you need a medium with a high surface area per unit volume. One of the many advantages of sumps is that they have relatively huge amounts of space, allowing the use of larger amounts of media which in turn frees you up to use types that may not have as much surface area per unit volume.
Media like pumice, ceramics, etc. rely upon their porous structure to increase their surface area...but are also more subject to clogging as the fine pores fill up with old dead bacteria and other organic matter. And once they are clogged, they are more difficult to clean by simple rinsing, as the small pores and passageways within the medium restrict the flow of water through them to clean them. These media also tend to be pretty heavy, making them more awkward and difficult to remove for cleaning. And some of them are very expensive, thanks to the successful marketing that makes them seem far better than they are.
Media like plastic pot scrubbers, bioballs/K1, and...my personal favourite...plastic shotgun shell wads, don't have as much surface are per unit volume, but they can be insanely cheap, they last literally forever, they are extremely light in weight making their removal for cleaning very easy, and their non-porous structure means they rinse clean in a snap.
They have only two real disadvantages. First: their relatively smaller surface area means that a larger quantity is needed. And second: they aren't "cool". It's impossible to point at a mesh bag full of pot scrubbers if you want to impress a gear head.
Don't forget one important point: the amount of bacteria your filter supports is not something that you can increase simply by adding more and more biomedia. The bacterial population is limited by the available food, which of course depends entirely upon the bioload in the tank. If you don't increase the bioload, adding more biomedia simply spreads the same population of bacteria over a larger area. So all you really need is "enough" surface area; in terms of filtration, more is not necessarily better. And if you experiment with it you will find that "enough" is actually a surprisingly small amount. I like to have far more biomedia than I actually "need" for a given tank, as it allows for easy removal of portions of it to kick-start new tanks when needed.
And as stated by others above...biomedia isn't intended to make water clear. That's the purview of mechanical media, and the better a job they do, the clearer the water AND the longer the biomedia can go without clogging. IMHO, the all-time "best" combination bio/mech medium would be some sort of sponge like Poret, but if that's all you use it is less convenient to keep it physically clean and rinsed out. Much better to separate bio and mech into two separate media in two separate filter compartments to maximize access and ease of maintenance.
Secondly, Pot scrubbers are one of my favourite kinds of bio media. And I don't care if anyone looks at my tanks or not. So it works out.
Thirdly, the bio- load is of 3 oscars in a 120 G. So its pretty heavy.
Fourthly, marketing myth is a real thing. Half of the things we can do without. But you realise that after years and years of fish keeping..
fifth, Point taken regarding mech and bio filtration from you and Cal amari.
my regards.
