I’m confused as I don’t understand what part of this thread sparked this type of response?
Stacking Media In Sump
- Thread starter HUKIT
- Start date
Basically...every part, except for the original question. A number of opinions expressed in response to your original question, each different, not much agreement and almost none of them related to that original question.
I was bored so I jumped into the pool with the rest of 'em.
Okay, straight answer? All of these ideas work because we all have so much room for bacterial colonization, so much more biomedia than we need, that it can't possibly matter which type is used or how it's stacked/piled/bagged in the filter. Quantifying the good and bad points of how the water flows through those various set-ups is just a game reminiscent of a crossword puzzle or a Sudoku; it likely acts as brain exercise but beyond that is completely immaterial to success with our aquariums.
If one really needed, or rather wanted, to improve the efficiency of ceramic ring media, I think less time spent calculating flow rates and more time spent with a hammer breaking up the rings into smaller pieces with an increase in total exterior surface area would be the best thing to do.
Last edited:
It’s not very rational to have too much space for bacteria 
People often build large sumps and fill them with ineffective media in an ineffective way.
It’s better to build smaller filters with efficient media.
I used to have sumps with all that plumbing, noise, and energy waste…
Now I just use 10 gallons of sponges for my 250 gallons of water, glued to the side of the aquarium, plus a drip water change system.
13W for the whole filtration — barely audible, safe, effective, and maintenance-free.
People often build large sumps and fill them with ineffective media in an ineffective way.
It’s better to build smaller filters with efficient media.
I used to have sumps with all that plumbing, noise, and energy waste…
Now I just use 10 gallons of sponges for my 250 gallons of water, glued to the side of the aquarium, plus a drip water change system.
13W for the whole filtration — barely audible, safe, effective, and maintenance-free.
If you have the space...and there is often lots of that under a large tank...there are several rational benefits to large sumps and lots of biomedia.It’s not very rational to have too much space for bacteria
People often build large sumps and fill them with ineffective media in an ineffective way.
It’s better to build smaller filters with efficient media.
I used to have sumps with all that plumbing, noise, and energy waste...
Now I just use 10 gallons of sponges for my 250 gallons of water, glued to the side of the aquarium, plus a drip water change system.
13W for the whole filtration — barely audible, safe, effective, and maintenance-free.
My 360 has a sump with a capacity of somewhere around 120 gallons, actually containing about 80 or 90 at typically operating levels. If nothing else, this means an increase in total water volume of roughly 25% over the tank volume alone, and of course a larger volume of water is always a good thing in terms of stability.
My DIY biomedia...plastic shotgun shell reloading wads... is very cheap and "inefficient" if measured against some commercial media...although it's way more efficient than some of the expensive look-at-me stuff that many aquarists use. It's clearly not ineffective either, since this design of sump has functioned perfectly for me for the past few decades; it works, so thus it is effective.
It allows me the luxury of removing large amounts of biologically mature media at a moment's notice for purposes to kick-starting a new tank on a moment's notice. I haven't "cycled" a tank from scratch for many years. When I moved into this home in 2011, I brought almost no fish with me on my cross-country trek...but I did bring a couple of large plastic trash cans full of lightweight plastic media that hosted a mature colony of bacteria. I was up and running immediately.
The sheer size of a large sump makes access and maintenance far easier, not that this is actually required under normal circumstances. My pump is instantly accessible and heaters if used are housed safe from interference by large fish. When I lucked into a swap with another aquarist that included several gallons of K1 media, I was able to comfortably construct a chamber to hold the stuff on my workbench, then easily insert it into the sump with no fuss. The K1 was then able to show off its one actual benefit to me: it entertained my granddaughters as it jiggled.
They've pretty much outgrown it, so it's gone now...removed even more quickly and easily than it was installed.I don't often put livestock into the sump, but it's there if required in a pinch and has hosted the odd critter over the years on a temporary basis. Back in my marine tank days I had a large and very colourful brittle star that lived for years in a transparent sump under the tank. Here on MFK,
duanes
often shows his system; he calls it a "sump" beside his main tank, but it's planted and stocked with fish and inverts; I'd call it a two-tank system with a modified Mattenfilter at one end of the lower tank, but the semantics don't matter. The system works; there is no point in detailing what's wrong with it, because the evidence clearly shows that there's nothing wrong with it."...all that plumbing, noise, and energy waste..."? Bringing this up as a negative is really reaching. A large sump makes no more noise, consumes no more electricity and certainly requires no more maintenance than a small one. Plumbing? It takes a pleasant afternoon to construct and assemble; after that, you're done and can amortize the cost (whether in dollars or personal angst) over the years or decades that the system operates.
The one proviso is that a large sump takes up a lot of space; if you have the room, there are numerous good things about it and really no bad ones. Having a tiny filter doing all the work is appealing to some people who like to worship at the altar of efficiency and enjoy the techie appeal, but that doesn't make it in any way "better" than a large one.
Last edited:
Do you have any pictures of this set up? I can’t recall ever seeing a filter siliconed to the glass.
Exactly. As long as there is a food source available then BB will colonise whatever your choice of media is, cheap or expensive. Far too many people overthink this subject to death.
Why? By your own admittance you've already got a winning formula in your set up. Why mess about with something that has worked so well for you that you don't even need to think about it?
Close, but not quite. Yes BB are all over but you'd be taking a huge gamble completely emptying your dedicated bio media space and solely relying on "other" surfaces.
The BB can't swim about to find food, they prefer the food being delivered to them! And the ideal place for this to happen is in your filter where water (containing food) is constantly flowing through.
In any aquarium set up the BB are everywhere but no doubt the greatest concentrations of them are in your filter, so emptying it might not be good! Though this would be very much down to your bio load. You may get away with it with very light stocking.
This has sort of put my headache to rest and potentially a **** load of money makes sense what you sayIsn't it wonderful? Multiple experienced keepers in disagreement...you're wrong, I'm right, he's out to lunch, she doesn't know what she's talking about. My method works because of this...your idea is obviously wrong because of that. Listen to me, because I'm the smartest guy in the room! I use big words, therefore I must be correct. I read all the promotional literature from all the manufacturers, so I must be right. I spend more on the hobby than you do, so I'm by definition a better fishkeeper than you.
And yet somehow all these folks are keeping fish successfully! How can this be?
Here's a chart comparing the surface area of various biomedia; I've seen similar things in multiple places on the internet, and they may not be identical but the general gist of them is very similar:
View attachment 1568562
If you don't think it's valid...you may very well be correct. So many of these comparisons look so similar that I think that's an argument for generally accepting it. A few outliers show things like ceramic rings and clay balls as having far more surface area, but I think that perhaps those inflated numbers are displaying the area of clean, unused media, straight out of the box with the price tag still attached. In practice...I think...these ultra-fine-pored media will very quickly become clogged with biofilm and microscopic debris, rendering the majority of their surface area useless...IMHO. And look at the numbers for poly floss; they may be correct when you put the stuff in on Monday morning, but by the end of the day, or the middle of the week, that light fluffy cloud of floss has degenerated to a flat black layer of slime, through which very little water actually penetrates, so...?
These charts don't consider other aspects of biomedia, such as cost. Some folks think that spending more on media guarantees better performance; I sometimes think that they should try a biomedia chamber filled with folding money just to see what happens. It'll work...I mean, anything will work, since the basic function of biomedia is just to sit there and be covered with bacteria...but then we'll probably get into a debate over the relative efficiency of $50 bills as opposed to $20's or $10's.
A biggie for me is weight, which ties in with ease of cleaning. No matter how carefully and thoroughly we mechanically filter our water before sending it into the biomedia, the media will eventually benefit from an occasional cleaning to remove excess biofilm, debris, sludge, etc. Ceramics weigh a ton and are a PITA to remove for cleaning. Sponges, for which I have almost unbridled admiration as a filter media, are also a messy PITA to clean, although this is not a frequent requirement...thank goodness.
I'm not sure about the obsession with ultimate efficiency. Stacked vs random; static vs fluid; blah, blah, blah. If Media A works "better" than Media B...if such can even be detected and agreed upon...then logic would dictate that you use only Media A. And yet we see all manner of sumps with countless chambers and partitions, each section filled with a different boutique medium. Why? If one is better than the other, why devote any space to the other?
We can't all be right, we can't all be wrong. But...if a keeper's chosen method works for him and his tank is healthy and his fish are thriving...why should he care what others think or say? And conversely, if he is constantly dealing with mysterious diseases and health problems and cloudy water and worrisome test numbers...then why would anyone care what he thinks or says?
Last edited:
Why, because there are new types of media that completes the nitrogen cycle which includes converting nitrates into nitrogen gas. The Maxspect nano blocks that I started my testing on July 1st has had a 34% reduction in nitrates. So by the end of the year when I have to replace the catalyst I should be close to a 50% reduction. So tell me why I wouldn’t use a product like this? The saltwater crowd have been dosing vodka and liquid carbon which helps feed then boosting established bio filtration, stimulating bacteria to colonize and consume the excess nutrients such as nitrate and phosphate.
This all sounds very sexy and scientific, but only a 50% reduction?!?!?
Nah, not for me. An easy weekly water change gives me almost a 100% reduction! To each their own.
As
jjohnwm
said, every hobbyist on the planet can argue until they're blue in the face over whose fish keeping tactics are the best.
This idea of a "catalyst" to feed the bacteria that complete the denitrification of nitrates is really interesting. So many others have claimed success with various media that create anoxic conditions to support those bacteria, but many or most of them don't address this aspect of the process. People have claimed to successfully reduce or eliminate nitrates simply by creating these anoxic zones in large blocks of fine-pored foam, containers of cat litter or other means, but if the bacteria don't have a source of food one wonders how it can work. Are their testing methods suspect? Are they just seeing what they want and hope to see?
Marketing a product that includes a source of nourishment for the bacteria, allowing them to obtain their oxygen form the breakdown of nitrate, sounds like a win/win; the aquarist benefits in obvious ways, and the company benefits from ongoing sales (of the catalyst) to its captive market.
I'll be honest here: I think nitrates serve an important function in today's aquarium. They are an easily-tested-for step in the breakdown and removal of aquarium fish waste. They keep us honest and guilt us into changing out water regularly. They're like Batman; they give us something to chase and fight and monitor, and we benefit because as we do the water changes we also remove all the other products and by-products of fish metabolism which are accumulating, and we replenish the important trace elements that are otherwise constantly being used up and diminished. We don't test for those things now, so they're out of sight and out of mind.
Let's face it; if a product beomes popular that removes nitrates successfully, that will be the end of water changing for a significant portion of the lazy aquarists who barely change their water now, let alone when the test kit reads 0 across the board. Hell, there are folks that keep their fish that way now; how much worse will it be then?
