How much bio-filtration do you really need?

[KaiserSousay]

I threw this together, just because.
It actually worked pretty good.
The 20 micron, whole house cartridges should last you longer than the 8 micron HOT250.
There are changes I would make if I were to keep it running. It has been torn down and parts scattered.
Makes a cool project, if you have the parts and some time on your hands.

 

[Moloch]

Yeah thats basically what I'm thinking, except it would sit under the tank. I'd use flex tubing with quick disconnects (and shutoffs) on either side of the filter so that I could easily pull it out and take it to a sink for maintenance. I have an extra rena spray bar I could put on its output & a magnum350 intake I could use with it. I just need the extra 40 bucks for the filter itself.

As far as the rest of the thread...its going on 2 days now, still no ammonia levels & the tank looks 95% better. There's still some small particles floating around, and it gets a little cloudy during/after feeding, but it clears up pretty easily. I think thats just the nature of sinking 3 massivore pellets, 8 carnivore pellets & a pinch of bloodworms all at once...I really need to work on my fish's diet :\

 

[Moloch]

Almost mae a new thread but I suppose I'll just update here.

For a month or so I've been running the 90 with just one xp3. Its got 2 30ppi & 2 20ppi pads in the bottom basket, the other two baskets are each half-full of bio media. I haven't had any major problems so far. I have to clean the filter more often than I'd like (seems like every week & a half to 2 weeks) to keep the water clean, and it still usually has some particulate floating around.

I've been running the single xp3 because I temporarily repurposed the xp1 & magnum250 to other tanks and my second xp3 is permanently on a 65g. Last night I was able to put the magnum250 on the 90 and its still running strong. I have a sponge on its intake to try an extend the life of the micron cartridge, at least for its first few cycles while the water gets polished.



So basically, I went from 2 xp3's full of bio-media, to a single basket worth of bio-media with no adverse affects and no mini-cycles. I'll probably consolidate all the media to one basket and fill the empty one with more filter pads, but I don't think I'll get rid of any more bio. My other thought was to run the xp3 full of mechanical filtration and run the xp1 full of bio-media, but I think I'll probably end up liking the magnum setup a bit better. We'll see...

 

[caoder]

just to give my .02 is that bacteria will grow on any surface with the appropriate conditions. oxygen and food being the key things for any living organism. If there is surface, there will be bacteria unless there's no flow at all such as a stopped canister during an outage. the main reason for that would be that the amount of bacteria on the surface within any media is grown to the balance point in regards to water movement and available food ( ammonia). if there is excess food more bacteria will grow. I don't believe oxygen would be a limiting factor anywhere with water flow because the fish will need a lot more oxygen than any bacterial colonies. So the limiting factors will become surface area and food. When you look at the fact that most people only run 1 canister per system and that provides sufficient surface for BB to clean a tank. I don't see why running 3 filters would do anything more than loosing efficiency. once you have too much area the balance would move towards less bacteria per surface area as opposed to growing more bacteria due to lack of food. Only thing to worry about is when you remove large amounts of area such as a canister filter, you shouldn't remove it instantly so that you loose all the bacteria in that filter, but it'd be at most a mini cycle if there wasn't enough BB in one canister. only reason to run 2 canisters or more filters i would believe is for redundancy and maybe run one as a polisher. Overall i would think that if you would want to improve performance, i would add some oxygen input into the intake of the canister to provide additional oxygen to the BB in the canister.

 

[jcardona1]

I don't see why running 3 filters would do anything

It doesn't. People here just love the idea of over-filtering and don't understand that bacteria will grow only to the point it equalizes with the bio load in the tank. The rest is just empty space. If your ammonia and nitrites are already at 0, then you could add all the filters in the world, and you won't get any extra benefit in terms of biological filtration.

 

[Moloch]

Which is why I've been redoing mine.... No matter what I do with the filters at this point the amount of bio media is going to stay the same. Now I'm just trying to add more mechanical filtration to the setup. So currently I'm trying a magnum250, if that doesn't work I might try some sort of setup between the xp1 and xp3 and if that doesnt satisfy then ill have to look for something else.

I'm pretty sure the magnum will do the trick though, might just take a few weeks of increased maintenance to get there.

 

[KaiserSousay]

Often, more filters are added when a powerhead would do the job.
Dead spots or watching debris float just out of reach of the filter intake lead some to think of adding another filter.
I do think, the more money you spend on filtration has a direct effect on how PO`ed a guy gets when the gunk dosen`t get pulled into the filter.
I run the Mag 250, a pair, and am happy with how clean they keep the tank.
The directional outflow helps getting the gunk not sucked into the filter, to settle in easy to clean spots.
Having an extra micron cartridge makes service easy.
I`ve run them for awhile now and have had no issues.