Planning on a 6' sump under an 8' 300g tank. Thinking of using foam for biological media, many seem to say poret foam is the best. I see you can get foam up to 4" thick. I also read the beneficial bacteria only grow on up to the 1st 1 1/2-2" of thickness of foam depth and I don't understand why this is. Water is passing through the entire foam, constantly. I can't see why the water would become anaerobic and the water can't become nutrient poor within 2 inches as others also seem to space multiple pieces of foam vertically in a sump and only separate each piece by a couple of inches.
The tank and sump were used previously as a reef set up. In the vertical baffles there were 2" pieces of matala matting. If these mats were 10-12 inches high and the water is either flowing upwards or downwards through the matting and baffle is the bb only growing in the 1st couple of inches of the matting and the rest is basically mechanical filtration?
This is a key question as my goal is to max my biological filtration after having an initial mechanical filtration stage. If the existing baffles do very little bio filtration then I'll have to rip them out and redesign the whole sump lay out.
Thanks
The tank and sump were used previously as a reef set up. In the vertical baffles there were 2" pieces of matala matting. If these mats were 10-12 inches high and the water is either flowing upwards or downwards through the matting and baffle is the bb only growing in the 1st couple of inches of the matting and the rest is basically mechanical filtration?
This is a key question as my goal is to max my biological filtration after having an initial mechanical filtration stage. If the existing baffles do very little bio filtration then I'll have to rip them out and redesign the whole sump lay out.
Thanks
