Bio media suppliers
- Thread starter Free Willy
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Lowes or home depot sell bags of lava rock. Works great for biomedia.
You can buy plastic shotgun wads, used for reloading ammunition, very inexpensively in big bags. They're like Poor Man's Bioballs, less surface area but so cheap that as long as you have a big enough bio chamber you're golden. They last forever, work well, and...best of all...weigh next to nothing, so removing them for the occasional quick rinse or simply reconfiguring your filtration a bit is very easy.
I also have used lava rock, old toothbrushes, and anything else i find.
The whole mystique over biomedia is to me overkill and a lot of useless hype.
Biomedia is simply a surface for bacteria to form and grow biofilm on, and I doubt those bacteria care one way or the other what that surface is.
As long as oxygenated water can flow over and around it, it works.
And the idea that we aquarists need a ton of extra biomedia is also overkill, once enough bacterial biofilm forms to consume the ammonia and nitrite our fish population produce, a lot more won't work any better because that population density of bio-bacteria is dependent on its food supply, ammonia and nitrite.
At the moment I use a couple little bag of rings, a lava rock block, as biomedia and some Porrett foam that functions as both bio, and mechanical media.
The majority of my bio filtration is done in my sump by aquatic and terrestrial plants, like Vallisneria, lilies, and mangrove saplings.
That dark end on the left side of the pic above, is where the bio and mechanical media is, the rest of the 125 gal sump, dedicated to plants.
And below are the results of that minor biomedia, yet heavy plant filtration.
The first tube above left reflects pH Normal pH range reagent, 8 to 8.2 (my normal tank water pH always overwhelms the low range reagent tube)
The 2nd tube is ammonia results 0
the blue tint tube is nitrite, results 0.
And the last tube on the right is for nitrate, undetectable.
The whole mystique over biomedia is to me overkill and a lot of useless hype.
Biomedia is simply a surface for bacteria to form and grow biofilm on, and I doubt those bacteria care one way or the other what that surface is.
As long as oxygenated water can flow over and around it, it works.
And the idea that we aquarists need a ton of extra biomedia is also overkill, once enough bacterial biofilm forms to consume the ammonia and nitrite our fish population produce, a lot more won't work any better because that population density of bio-bacteria is dependent on its food supply, ammonia and nitrite.
At the moment I use a couple little bag of rings, a lava rock block, as biomedia and some Porrett foam that functions as both bio, and mechanical media.
The majority of my bio filtration is done in my sump by aquatic and terrestrial plants, like Vallisneria, lilies, and mangrove saplings.
That dark end on the left side of the pic above, is where the bio and mechanical media is, the rest of the 125 gal sump, dedicated to plants.
And below are the results of that minor biomedia, yet heavy plant filtration.
The first tube above left reflects pH Normal pH range reagent, 8 to 8.2 (my normal tank water pH always overwhelms the low range reagent tube)
The 2nd tube is ammonia results 0
the blue tint tube is nitrite, results 0.
And the last tube on the right is for nitrate, undetectable.
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I've never heard of that being used. I'll have to try it. Lava rock works great but can be a pain to clean because of the weight.
I've been using shotgun wads for well over thirty years now. They work very well for me, either fully submerged or as wet/dry "trickle" filtration.
I agree, lava rock is wonderful as well, but I like to rinse the schmutz out of a biofilter every couple years and a couple cubic feet of shotgun wads weighs maybe a couple ounces; lighter by far than just about anything else, even including pot scrubbies. And you could probably rinse and spray a bunch of lava rocks for a week and not really dislodge any of the dead bacterial debris from within it's porous sub-surface structure. Shotgun wads, either in a mesh bag, a perforated bucket or basket or even just loose, come out looking almost like new after a few seconds under a faucet or hose nozzle.
