an idea to help everybody

[X24]

well i just got an idea (its 2:19 a.m.) about how to help many people on the forum with their filtration.

we should have an experiment to see how much bio media is needed on a tank. it shouldn't be hard....but it might take a while. you would take a fully cycled tank with more then enough bio media, and slowly take some of it out every week, and test ammonia and nitrite 4 days after you have taken the media out.

This should tell people a ballpark figue of how much bio media they need, and settle a debate that many people overdo bio media.

 

[vanilla__gorilla__]

I think there are to many other factors how well/often they clean there tank, what fish they have in there tank, if they over feed there fish, if there tank is over stocked, what kind of media they are using and so on

 

[maseyferguson05]

Some media manufactures tells you the recommended oz to gallons or liters to gallons already.

 

[cvermeulen]

More is better. THe nice thing about having MORE is that you have a ton of flexibility. If you clean part of the filter and kill the bacteria, other parts will help re-seed and minimize minicycling. You can have 1000x "too much" biomedia, and only the amount of bacteria the ammonia levels can sustain will actually grow on it, but you'll have a ton of potential colonization area.

Right now I have about 15 gallons of bio balls, a decent sized sponge, a square yard of filter floss, and 200lbs of fine gravel as bio media... which is WAY more than enough for my current bio load, but then again, they all will grow, and if I want to power feed, I know the setup can handle the ammonia.

 

[cvermeulen]

Also, the amount per gallon is meaningless really... a 5000 gallon tank with nothing in it needs almost zero filtration, whereas a 50gal with 3 oscars (please don't flame me, it's only a hypothetical example) will need a ton of filtration and biological media. It also depends on if the tank has any plants, and whether the tank is bare or decorated, how many water changes, etc, etc.