Fluval Biomax vs pre-filter
- Thread starter j-lor
- Start date
Now here's a question for everyone. It says in the fx5 manual to have all media in bags and have none loose. Looks to me like biomax is big enough for that to not matter. Who has it in bags and who doesn't?
Its about marketing. I have BioMax that is over 10 years old. In that time, I would have replaced BioMax 24 times. You do not need to replace BioMax
You can soak BioMax in bleach to remove everything from its pores. 25% - 50% at a time would work.
I don't have it in bags.
Prefilter is COMPETLY POINTLESS in a FX5. The water passes through sponges before if ever hits the media trays. These were used in older canisters like the EHEIM Classics before any sponges to catch any big stuff and help even out the flow of water. Something you don't need to do in the newer canisters.
Your media WILL house benificial bacteria, just not as much as biomax. Scrubbies are great for wet/dry systems as are bio-balls. Yet both are rarely used in canisters. Why? Because in a wet/dry, the water is trickling over a large amount of media, the internal pores of the media would not be utilized as they are in a pressurized system like a canister. A wet/dry full of ceramic bio-media would be great, but overkill and overpriced. In a canister, space is limited so you need much more surface area in a smaller space, ceramic media delivers exactly that.
For now, leave in the prefilter and when you can afford it buy a box of better biomedia and throw it in. When you get a few extra dollars, buy another box. Or just save that spare cash and buy a big box and save a few bucks.
Biomax really isn't an expensive media. Compare it to Substrat Pro which is what I have my canister filled with (though it only took 2 liters).
This here is pretty much the ideal biological media but it's price is prohibitive and overfiltering is unneccesary (a wet/dry filled with these would still be cool though). It does have it's place in nitrate coil reductors, a sheet or block in the bottome of a wet/dry, a little in an undersized canister (or just when you need more bio-media but don't have room), a HOB, or anywhere else extra biological filtration is required but space is at a premium.
Your media WILL house benificial bacteria, just not as much as biomax. Scrubbies are great for wet/dry systems as are bio-balls. Yet both are rarely used in canisters. Why? Because in a wet/dry, the water is trickling over a large amount of media, the internal pores of the media would not be utilized as they are in a pressurized system like a canister. A wet/dry full of ceramic bio-media would be great, but overkill and overpriced. In a canister, space is limited so you need much more surface area in a smaller space, ceramic media delivers exactly that.
For now, leave in the prefilter and when you can afford it buy a box of better biomedia and throw it in. When you get a few extra dollars, buy another box. Or just save that spare cash and buy a big box and save a few bucks.
Biomax really isn't an expensive media. Compare it to Substrat Pro which is what I have my canister filled with (though it only took 2 liters).
This here is pretty much the ideal biological media but it's price is prohibitive and overfiltering is unneccesary (a wet/dry filled with these would still be cool though). It does have it's place in nitrate coil reductors, a sheet or block in the bottome of a wet/dry, a little in an undersized canister (or just when you need more bio-media but don't have room), a HOB, or anywhere else extra biological filtration is required but space is at a premium.
