? for those of you using ceramic rings for your ray tanks

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
I view my current filtration as a joke. Have wanted to upgrade for a long time but it's hard to justify spending all that scratch on filtration when you KNOW that money could have easily paid for a BD, but I'm sure I will be happy when I see how much happier my rays are gonna be in adequately filtered water and plenty of room to move, without needing to "upgrade in the future". Afterall if you can justify spending thousands on rays you should be able to easily justify spending that kinda loot on adequate housing right?

his is my shot at what I feel will be "adequate" DIY filtration for my rays.

Media showed up today.

If anyone tells me I didn't get enough I'm gonna be chapped.

So the system is likely going to contain----
4 adult Marbles. 15-22"
6 juvies 8-12"

The main tank is 10X4x2.5. Depending how well the system works it may just end up filtering all of my ray tanks, but will likely just start on the 750 and 240.

I went with 60 lbs of ceramic rings (not the cheap ones either) for the submerged portion of the system.

The wet/dry will have about 1500 pot scrubbies or roughly 80 gallons.

The Bio reactor will contain 5 cubic foot of K1. Have another cubic foot but willl likely use that for the pup tank. Will also be adding at least one cubic foot of the bio "chips" now offered by the same people, but at $130/cubic foot I will need a little bit of time to recoop.

Mechanical will start with 4 7X16 100/200 micron bags. Gonna try that and see how it holds up. IF they dirty up too quick I'll likely just add 4 more higher micron bags before the 100/200s. Got a spare set of bags to allow me to swap out.

Pumps will be a pair of Darts and probobly use the pond's hydrive 4700 for the triple towered wet/dry.

Heating may be an issue. Will definetly need upgraded but will likely just start with 5 stealths. In reality with the way my drip is set up I have gone several weeks with no heaters. But if anyone can suggest a nice inline in the neighborhood of 1-1.5K watts I'm all ears.....

Open to critisism..... If there's an issue I'd like to address it before it's too late.
 
Ya you have more than enough. I have a 50 gal bio reactor with roughly 4 cubic feet of k1 and then my 24" sand pool filter with 100 lbs of zeolite and I've just hit the point where I need more. There are 11 adult rays, one being a huge female castexi and usually 2 females are pregnant at a time. 4lbs of shrimp and maybe 1/3 pound of others (pellets,talapia,smelts,veggies) per day. You are set.
 
sorry DB, i'm not much help.
i was using enough ceramic rings to fill 3 drawers of a fluval 405 for 2 juvi retics. not sure how much that is in terms of amount. 2-3 boxes of the fluval rings?

now that i'm on my new tank, i use three drawers (3 ft x 1.5 ft x 10in high) in my trickle tower filled with pot scrubbies due to a much more inexpensive route to house BB.

best of luck in figuring this out.
 
DB junkie;4970488; said:
I was curious how you guys using ceramic rings as bio for your rays gauge how much is needed???

Can you tell me how much rings you have for how many rays? Is there a rough calculation of any sort?

A lb/10 gallons gonna surfice for heavily stocked ray tanks?

Thanks guys....... Still pulling my hair out trying to figure out filtration for my big tank. :irked:
Click to expand...


You need to contact the company and ask them how much a cubic foot of there material will handle when feeding based on lbs or grams.

For instance I use the K3 kaldness in my system and they will give you the exact amount of food one cubic foot of there material will handle per day so you can gauage how much you feed per day and then just figure out how much media you need to use.

I have never done that with any ceramic product but I know the Kaldness product can give you this information before you order.

Plus K1 and K3 are far better then 99% of the other products out there, yes it is designed to be agitated in the water but you can also use it in a bio-tower and have the water trickle down thru it. It works just as good both ways and is the only product I will use for my systems.

Just my experience I have about a gallon of eheim ceramic in my FX5 and that seems to handle up to a .5 lbs of food a day with no problem but that is my system and based on my fish population which is 30 dats 4-5" and 2 rays 6" in size.

Do your self a favor buy the K3 over the K1 and use there new bio-chip product it works better then anything I have seen. Use it in a boil barrel type of filter with the water coming in at the bottom and some big airstones to turn the water and get the media moving around in there.

I have dropped all other types of systems for this simple and easy design no ultima's anymore or bio towers just a big boil barrel.

If you need some pictures for reference I can post a video to show it in action.

Here is a quick picture my new boil barrel is 8x6 and holds 75 cubic feet of K3 and there bio-ship material. This was before we added the media about two months ago I will post picture with the media in the system next.

Bd-leo pups & New system photo 2-21-11 011.JPG
 
csx4236;5014371; said:
You need to contact the company and ask them how much a cubic foot of there material will handle when feeding.

For instance I use the K3 kaldness in my system and they will give you the exact amount of food one cubic foot of there material will handle per day so you can gauage how much you feed per day and then just figure out how much media you need to use.

I have never done that with any ceramic product but I know the Kaldness product can give you this information before you order.
Click to expand...

Can you elaborate on the K3? I'm only aware of "K1". Is K3 the $130/cubic foot stuff? If so it says you're supposed to use it at a 1:4 ratio with normal K1.

According to the prefab reactors that aquaticeco sells I believe I should be able to handle 5-7 lbs of food per day with the reactor alone.

2.5 cubic foot is supposed to support 140lbs of livestock. I figured rays being much different then average fish should be fine if you double the media.

I tried to find a similar spec from the ring manufacturers and it was a dead end. Nobody knew anything. That was the original reason for this post.

I think that considering I'm not expecting any of my rays to break 2', and the fact I'm only feeding 2lbs/day TOPS, I think I'll be set.

There will also be a 400-600 gallon pond chock full of live plants and lit with halides......

EDIT..... Figures. I already bought the K1. Should have known as soon as I did, there would be better available.
 
DB junkie;5014401; said:
Can you elaborate on the K3? I'm only aware of "K1". Is K3 the $130/cubic foot stuff? If so it says you're supposed to use it at a 1:4 ratio with normal K1.

According to the prefab reactors that aquaticeco sells I believe I should be able to handle 5-7 lbs of food per day with the reactor alone.

2.5 cubic foot is supposed to support 140lbs of livestock. I figured rays being much different then average fish should be fine if you double the media.

I tried to find a similar spec from the ring manufacturers and it was a dead end. Nobody knew anything. That was the original reason for this post.

I think that considering I'm not expecting any of my rays to break 2', and the fact I'm only feeding 2lbs/day TOPS, I think I'll be set.

There will also be a 400-600 gallon pond chock full of live plants and lit with halides......

EDIT..... Figures. I already bought the K1. Should have known as soon as I did, there would be better available.
Click to expand...

The only difference between K1 and K3 is the size of the media depending on your application it works better for me as I can use larger holes to allow more water to flow out of the boil barrel and into my sock chamber and the media.

There is a difference between surface area and bio-load each can handle but there very similair.
 
Here is a few pictures and video.

Picture with all three of there products, K1 is small media, K3 is the larger size and some bio-chips.

Also pictures and video of the boil-barrel.

Media 004.JPG

Media 001.JPG
 
i have a 180g sump with k1 and k3 media together and am very happy with its perfomance.i have a HUGE load of fish would never dare try this with ceramic rings..i highly recommend kaldnes media.best product i have used to date.
now that i see mike has used the chips, i will have to add some.it cant hurt. thanks for the tip mike!
 
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