How Important Is Bio Media?

[Toby_H]

I know you are waiting on my experiment tank... and I promise I will get numbers verified with it in due time

In short, I think the “needs” you suggest above are considerably exaggerated.

Elsewhere someone made some obnoxious assumptions, speculations and exaggerations regarding the way I keep my tanks and or my approach to filtration… I suggest you ignore others as they attempt to tell you what I have and always feel free to ask me to verify anything I suggest…

To start, I do not think it is “a bad idea” to use “more than necessary”… Although I do think it is a good idea to know what is necessary, and what is overkill… I feel not nearly enough of us know (approx) where that line is…

This (current) 125 Gal

Is stocked with 25~35 young adult Steiny Geos (breeding Colony, several females holding), young adult breeding pair of Elliot Cichlids, two 3” Dempseys, 5.5” & 7” Blue Dempsey pair, & 12” Black Ghost Knife…
Just last week I removed (approx) 14 3~5” Dempseys… This weekend I’ll be adding 2 Trios of Apistos… the following week I’ll be adding 6~10 Bolivian Rams…

It is filtered by two AC 110s (sponge only) and two Magnum HOT (250 gph) with the micron cartridges (which are designed for removing fine particles)… I have two Koralia powerheads I keep putting in and taking out… I can’t quite get them exactly how I want them, they are out at the moment…

There is a TON of décor in the tank, all of which I’m sure is coated in beneficial bacteria… It has a fairly heavy stock list as well as a few rather sensitive fish (Blue Dempseys and BGK).

When I do filter maintenance… I remove the sponges from the AC filters and rinse them heavily under the tap with hot water for several minutes… When I clean the Mag HOTs, I remove the cartridges and soak them overnight in bleach and leave the filters turned off as I do…

I have never had a detectable level of ammonia nor nitrite in this tank… My nitrates climb typically and I do 30~70% water changes every 4~8 days…


I kept a 1,200+ gallon fishroom with 300+ gal of tanks in the house after years of keeping tanks in abundance. During that time I realized how little fancy media was really needed and how strong beneficial bacteria really is.

I have no clue if I’m killing it or washing it away when I rinse my Sponges under hot tap water… but I know from experience it really doesn’t matter… I know from experience that (just like we all say) beneficial bacteria grows on all of the surfaces in my system…

I’ll offer one more example of a set up I’ve kept with long term success…

I had 5 of these tiers in my fish room and a few similar tiers made of 30 gal tanks…

This is a (48” x 18” @ 12” tall) 50 gal on top… divided 50 gal in the middle… 75 gal on bottom… There was a 700 gph pump in the 75 gal that pumped water into the top 50 Gal… which went through an overflow and split into each half of the middle 50 gal… each half of the middle 50 gal had an overflow that lead to the bottom 75 gal… the bottom 75 gal had an AC 110 w/ sponge only…

If you look in the top tank you can see a bag of Bio Rings that come stock with the AC 110... There were being used to seed the tank along with the mature AC 110 on the 75 gal… This pic was taken as I was first settingup the fishroom.

At one point this tier had four 3~4” Midas grow outs in the top tank… Two young breeding pairs of Dempseys in the middle tank… and the bottom tank was over crowded with a 12” Oscar, 6” female Trimac, 12” BGK, 8” female Dempsey and a young breeding pair of Convicts…

I pulled the sponge out of the AC and rinsed it under hot tap water to clean it… and pulled the prefilter off the pump and rinsed it under hot tap water as well… With the above referenced stock list, I never had any detectable trace of ammonia or nitrite, and my nitrate built up as would be expected… I did 2 large water changes per week…

Keep in mind I had many similar tiers in the fish room… I had many breeding pairs… I was breeding/raising Blue Dempseys…

Here are a couple of pics from that crazily over stocked 75 Gal that was on bottom…

Note the same rock ‘house’ can be seen in both pics and the same rock house can be seen in the full tier pic above…



I do not recommend that you are this loose with your filtration or your maintenance… But when suggestion to others what they need, I hope you keep this in mind and make your explanations a little more realistic. I agree with general principals of overkill, but I also agree with a moderate level of overkill that doesn’t make me go broke spending $100 on media to stuff in $300 worth of canisters to keep a 75 gal tank going… When a single AC 110 is all that is needed.

Feel free to filter your own tanks this way, but do not scare off the new guy telling him that he has to...

 

[tcarswell]

That is amazing. So you run one sponge in the AC110 ? Ive tried two and I would have to cut to fit... but now im using purigen so its one sponge then 500 ml of purigen in two bags then a big bag of matrix carbon (I know I just like sparkling water) This thread has given me some new confidence with my bacteria colonies I test 2 times a week anyways so if I get a spike ill know and use prime until it catches up.
The only time ive had a spike in ammonia was when I moved an established 55 gallons stock from the 55 gallon and left the UGF behind and only kept the eheim 2215 from the original 55. I moved all the stock at once and even added 2 small venestus. My ammonia spiked then stabilized after 3 days. Apparently the UGF worked better than I had anticipated it would (or was).

 

[Jgray152]

WEll that just bashes the sump rule out of the window that I thought was a heep of crap anyways

 

[ward1066]

alot of breeders just run a couple sponges in a bare tank, nothing new. I think it all comes down to ease of maintence. I find sponges and ac 110's a PIA to clean, where canisters and wet drys are much easier. wet drys being the easiest of all IMO. cznisters can be a pain but if you only do it twice a year its not that bad. sponges and ac 110s you have to clean much more frequently. I still believe extra biomedia helps break down waste and prevents clogging,,, just my experience.

 

[Toby_H]

alot of breeders just run a couple sponges in a bare tank, nothing new.

I completely agree what I do is “nothing new” yet this common knowledge of the past seems to have been completely lost to many newer people and often suggested to be untrue…

I find sponges and ac 110's a PIA to clean, where canisters and wet drys are much easier.

Although we each have our own experience… I have absolutely no clue how you came to this conclusion…

It takes me about 10 minutes to pull 6 sponges out of AC 110s, rinse them thoroughly, replace them and get the filters running again. Compare that to any canister… I agree some sumps can be set up to be cleaned this easily, yet few are.

canisters can be a pain but if you only do it twice a year its not that bad.

This is a VERY misleading statement that causes new people a lot of problems…

Waste collected by a filter is still waste in the system until the filter is cleaned. As waste breaks down in a canister filter (just like any filter) it breaks down into smaller particles which clog pores. This drastically reduces the (theoretically) valuable “surface area” making “Bio Media” far less efficient and also slows down flow rates making the overall filter less efficient.

While it is true that most canisters can be set up to be cleaned every few months, it requires a very thorough prefilter that is cleaned frequently… Not many area set up that way… And twice a year is just a flat out gross exaggeration…

Note: In almost every case it would be easier to clean an AC sponge than a prefilter... and they should be cleaned just as often...

I still believe extra biomedia helps break down waste and prevents clogging,,, just my experience.

Bacteria converts ammonia to nitrite and nitrite to nitrate… once all of the ammonia & nitrite is converted… you can’t break down more… “Bio Media” is simply an inert platform that bacteria can grow on, if needed. It does absolutely nothing in and of itself to break down waste.

I have no clue what the “prevents clogging” is based on… and see no way for it to be valid...




Ward… I’m sorry to have picked your post apart the way I did, but this post was full of fairly common slight misconceptions that are some of the reasons why people make inefficient choices about how to set up their filtration. I don’t mean to be argumentative, I mean to be educational…

 

[Toby_H]

WEll that just bashes the sump rule out of the window that I thought was a heep of crap anyways

I feel most sumps are set up with huge amounts of space wasted creating man many times more "Bio Media" than any system could ever use...

Although I fully recognize several values of a sump... such as:

* increasing overall water volume (the solution to pollution is dilution)…

*Uncluttering the viewable area of a tank…

*A place to create a refugium (something I think FAR more sump users should explore)

*Allowing for zero bypass mechanical media to be created at higher flow rates

*Simple maintenance

 

[dwilder]

one question i have is i would think that some where out there is the research that says how much bb in a square inch can handle a certain ppm of ammonia per gallon,i know this can differ because of oxygen levels etc. but at least a ball park idea then we could add according to are tanks.i mean with all the large aquariums,water treatment plants and so on the info has to be out there then we would not have to rely on guess work or what a filter company tells us

 

[dogofwar]

I agree that some folks on here tend to go overboard with the amount of bio media that they provide. For 99% of tanks, there definitely is a point of diminishing returns, especially in terms of cost.

Nearly all of my tanks have a sponge filter and a box filter. I keep some gravel in my box filters.

Heavily stocked tanks have an extra sponge and/or a DIY (above the tank) dump filter (basically a wet/dry above the tank powered by a small pump or powerhead).

I find it much more important to remove sources of ammonia (excess food, poop, etc.) before the bacteria must break it down via siphoning and mechanical filtration (changing the fluff on the box filters and pre-filter on the dump filters) than building massive bio filter capacity. Doing weekly or more often water changes doesn't hurt either.

Without pre-filters, canister filters fill with gunk... and thus need to be changed frequently. Too much work for me.

 

[ward1066]

Maybe I am doing something wrong with the ac110s but when I just pull the sponges out alone junk gets thrown back into the tank. I found I usually have to pull the whole unit off , usually spilling water in the meantime. When I say breaking down waste I mean from solid to liquid. My feeling is this happens with large amounts of biomedia

 

[Noto]

Here's what I do with AC110s, Ward:

First, disconnect the intake tube by pulling it up and out of the socket. Then, if there isn't a lot of gunk in the filter, I just pull the sponge out, rinse and return it, and reset the intake tube.

If it is a gunkier tank, like my snapper tank, I unplug the filter after disconnecting the intake tube, then lift the whole thing off the tank, rinse media and compartment, then replace and plug back in.

Disconnecting the intake tube before unplugging the filter prevents back-siphoning of the water in the media compartment.