Do you Clean your Ballz??

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sabotage

sabotage

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Jul 17, 2005
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Was wondering if ya'll clean your Bio-balls in your sump w/d??? Was reading and it aid that they become a Nitrate factory..Is this True??? And can you also can you put ball's in your cannister as media???? What is the best Pound-for-pound filter media for my 2 fx-5's???
 
"Do you Clean your Ballz??"

Back a few years ago my wife used to help me at it.
We enjoyed the chance to be side by side busy doing things we both really liked to spend hours doing.
We had fun with it, made sorta of a nite for us.

But after a while my wife just got sick and tired of helping me clean them when she had her own stuff that was in need of a good scrubbing rub down.
And the fact is that no matter how clean you get them they are just filthy later from being used.

I talked my wife's sister about it and she came over to the house and helped my wife and I a few times.
Oh, they were some fun nights I remember!

But then in return my wife had to go over to her sister's house the next weekend and help them clean her husband's so I always felt a little left out of the fun.

What I do lately is wait for them to get real dirty, then I will post s notice at church and try to find some young boy or girl to come over to the house and clean them for me while I watch TV.

Im told they have some videos you can down load off a website if you want to know more how to do it?
 
kumdoalan;1664180; said:
"Do you Clean your Ballz??"

Back a few years ago my wife used to help me at it.
We enjoyed the chance to be side by side busy doing things we both really liked to spend hours doing.
We had fun with it, made sorta of a nite for us.

But after a while my wife just got sick and tired of helping me clean them when she had her own stuff that was in need of a good scrubbing rub down.
And the fact is that no matter how clean you get them they are just filthy later from being used.

I talked my wife's sister about it and she came over to the house and helped my wife and I a few times.

Oh, they were some fun nights i tell you!
But them my wife had to go over to her sister's house and help them clean her husband's so I always felt a little left out of the fun.

What we do lately is wait for them to get real dirty, then I will post s notice at church and try to find some young boy or girl to come over and clean them for me while I watch TV.

I have some videos I down loaded off a website if you want to know how to do it?
Click to expand...

LOL :ROFL: i can feel that sensuality in this conversation....lol
 
sabotage;1661854; said:
Was wondering if ya'll clean your Bio-balls in your sump w/d??? Was reading and it aid that they become a Nitrate factory..Is this True??? And can you also can you put ball's in your cannister as media???? What is the best Pound-for-pound filter media for my 2 fx-5's???
Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure that cleaning them will remove the bacteria living on them, which is bad. In fact, they are a nitrate factory, and its supposed to be that way. The bacteria convert ammonia and nitrIte into nitrAte. The aren't very good to use in a canister though. Fluval Biomax is fine, or the eheim sintered glass stuff. They have high surface area and work better when completely submerged.

I haven't cleaned my balls since I've had them.
 
i would think you would want to clean them, but only do a small portion at a time so as to not kill off all the BB
 
The "nitrate factory" thing is a reef keeping issue. You cannot denitrify waste in FW as you can in SW (with live rock, deep sand beds, etc.), but nitrates aren't the problem they are in salt either.

ANY FW filter could be termed a nitrate factory as nitrates are the byproduct of any healthy filter system. The amount is always in exact correspondence to the amount of waste nitrified. The END of the cycle is when you change water (i.e. eliminating the nitrates).

To answer the original question, if your bio-balls are properly prefiltered you should never have to clean them.
 
couple of times a year i will rinse them out in the sump. i just submerge them and swish them around in the tank water. then wait a couple hours and do a water change.
 
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