mdb_talon;2647073; said:Not arguing on whether this is good biomedia or not, but will point out there is a whole lot more to selection that square foot per gallon. If that was all there was too it you might as well use sand.
Things like water flow, available surface area, ease of clogging, how easy it is to remove, etc should all factor into the selection. Personally I like bioballs and scrubbies. They allow for very high water flow, very easy to pick out 1/4 of them at a time and clean them while leaving the others in there, hardly ever get clogged, etc. With many of these rocklike biomedia they have extremely high surface area but they prohibit water flow, clog easily, waste surface area (much more likely for large parts of the media to be smashed together and be "dead spots"), and in my opinion is harder to clean (assuming you want to just take like 1/4 of them out at a time to clean).
Anyway I think the various media have their place depending on the application, but there are many reasons to use things like scrubbies and bioballs other than being cheap
There is more to be considered than just square footage, but that doesn't make them more important. If you have good mechanical filtration, you don't have to worry about clogging. Also, if you have them placed right, you rarely have to take them out.
I don't recommend people for 2 main reasons:
1) They are square footage inefficient based on the weight
2) They are space inefficient base on the weight
If you feel like putting a humongous wet/dry on your tank then you have all that room so why not with pot scrubbies. But if you have less space to devote to bio media then a properly construct 3-stage set up with a high volume porous media is the superior choice.
