Need a little advice

[Bderick67]

Huh? I am reading the lowest level I have to read...

And I use both... Seachem and fluval. And why do you say it is poor? Because they don't advertise that they have almost an acre in 1 box for bio material to be on? Honestly I am very doubtful of any claims... Let alone if it really is that fine then there would be no room for the water to actually flow through. Anyways all we really need is porous material and I have enough to keep water parameters in order, like I said I don't see anything bad, yet the fish still has H.I.T.H. hence something isn't right.

Anywho I have another filter coming and more bio-material. At the moment I am keeping the Os in the 120 and have moved everyone else to the 240.

You should not be reading any levels of nitrites in your tank, if everything is right.

When compared to biomax or ehfisubstrat it is poor, supporting links to this data can be found in this link;
http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1422083&postcount=11

Hagan Biomax each ceramic ring contains at least 100 square feet of surface area x approx 66 rings per liter = 6600 sq. ft. of surface area per liter.

Eheim EHFISUBSTRAT with over 450 m2 per liter = 4842 sq. ft. of surface area per liter.

Seachem Matrix™ provides over 160,000 cm2 per liter = 170 sq. ft. of surface area per liter.

 

[cchhcc]

Carbon is not related to HITH...... That's an old one that isn't supported by data. In most cases, HITH is a result of long term captivity in highly organic (e.g. nitrate laden) water or in water that is much too hard for a tank's inhabitants. For instance, SA parrots and some pikes pit out quite a bit in hard water.

There can also be a missing nutritional component (rare) or a disease component (rare too) with HITH.

 

[ikevi]

You should not be reading any levels of nitrites in your tank, if everything is right.

When compared to biomax or ehfisubstrat it is poor, supporting links to this data can be found in this link;
http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1422083&postcount=11

Hagan Biomax each ceramic ring contains at least 100 square feet of surface area x approx 66 rings per liter = 6600 sq. ft. of surface area per liter.

Eheim EHFISUBSTRAT with over 450 m2 per liter = 4842 sq. ft. of surface area per liter.

Seachem Matrix™ provides over 160,000 cm2 per liter = 170 sq. ft. of surface area per liter.

Ugh, as I already said the lowest level detectable... That means there is NO level lower... the < could mean 0...

No as to sq ft. Like I said I have seen the numbers, it honestly doesn't mater... The numbers I would like to know is how much surface area is the water readily accessible too... Not how much surface area could be in a cub block of each piece. In other words I don't care about the numbers they don't matter. (I am a condensed matter physicist I deal with these types of things all the time.) It all depends on how someone wants to present something... IE if I took a solid ball and a hollow ball, I could say that the hollow ball had twice the amount of surface area... when if we only care about what water could get to it would only be the outer surface.... I am not saying one is better than the other. I honestly don't know, since I have no way of testing them with the exact same parameters.

I guess a good test might be to take say 1 qt of both material, put them in 1 qt of water and see how filled the container it. That would at least give you an idea of how much space is air/surface area in these things. I would guess that you wouldn't even see any real difference let alone a supposed factor of of near 3... (IE if it really has ~10 times more surface area that would mean it would need what thinking as spheres they give you the most surface area vs volume, you would have to have a factor of ~3 so that for some unit sphere (r=1) 4/3*pi*r^3/4*pi*r^2=x/10 => we should see a factor of some sort near 10/3 = 3.3333)

And like I said I highly, highly doubt that you will see such an amazing amount of porosity difference. (Note the key thing is that to do this you have to have the same volume of each substance, not weight.) Anyone want to actually do this for me?... eh if I have time I might see about picking up some more just to see it for myself.

 

[Bderick67]

Ugh, as I already said the lowest level detectable... That means there is NO level lower... the < could mean 0...

No as to sq ft. Like I said I have seen the numbers, it honestly doesn't mater... The numbers I would like to know is how much surface area is the water readily accessible too... Not how much surface area could be in a cub block of each piece. In other words I don't care about the numbers they don't matter. (I am a condensed matter physicist I deal with these types of things all the time.) It all depends on how someone wants to present something... IE if I took a solid ball and a hollow ball, I could say that the hollow ball had twice the amount of surface area... when if we only care about what water could get to it would only be the outer surface.... I am not saying one is better than the other. I honestly don't know, since I have no way of testing them with the exact same parameters.

I guess a good test might be to take say 1 qt of both material, put them in 1 qt of water and see how filled the container it. That would at least give you an idea of how much space is air/surface area in these things. I would guess that you wouldn't even see any real difference let alone a supposed factor of of near 3... (IE if it really has ~10 times more surface area that would mean it would need what thinking as spheres they give you the most surface area vs volume, you would have to have a factor of ~3 so that for some unit sphere (r=1) 4/3*pi*r^3/4*pi*r^2=x/10 => we should see a factor of some sort near 10/3 = 3.3333)

And like I said I highly, highly doubt that you will see such an amazing amount of porosity difference. (Note the key thing is that to do this you have to have the same volume of each substance, not weight.) Anyone want to actually do this for me?... eh if I have time I might see about picking up some more just to see it for myself.

Well it looks as if you are happy with your media and filtration, not sure what the purpose of this thread is though, I guess it's the HITH. Personally I would want a test kit that definetly showed the difference between zero and .3 mg per liter. And I wasn't aware that a liter was a measure of weight, I could've swore it was a measure of volume.


Good luck with your new tank, post some pics as soon as it's up and running.

 

[ikevi]

Huh? Did you even actually read my first or second post? (if you did you would realize this is in units of mg/l.) And if you know of a test kit better than the Tetratest Laborett, then feel free to suggest away... And this is Nitrite... sure the ammonia has a 0 mg/l but I don't see what use it would be to have a test kit that showed you that you had say 10 mg/l vs 20 mg/l of nitrite unless the price is nearly the same. (Oh and if you didn't realize mg/l=ppm...)

And yes I never did ask if my type of filter material was good... I asked if I should put more filtration in. And it was said that I should be fine and see if there were other causes. Hence I have been treating. (IN fact after I raised the ph I have been watching my O heal already...) Anyways I am sorry if I sound a little annoyed, I am just tired and I tend to get cranky when I feel people are reading the first few words and then replying. I thank you for you time. (It is just that whenever I see numbers like you presented that are obviously just advertisers I can't trust them and I try to make people realize this... The only way to accurately compare anything filter related would have to be either with experience (IE have used both in the exact same setups) or I would need a scientific journal reporting the finding done by an non partial researcher. (In this case a surface analysis specialist, namely exactly what I am...) But there is no way I would be willing to take an STM, TEM, or SEM and expose it to these materials just to see if these substances truly are built so differently that one can have over 10 orders of magnitude more surface area than the other. (Though I think the TEM would be the only system that would actually work with this stuff.)

Oh and I have the 240 running with some fish at the moment, just don't have good shots... but here are two.

Obviously I will be putting more filtration in there and I will put in some woodwork, but things are soaking at the moment, and the new filters are in the mail.

Anyways again thanks for your time, and if I seemed annoyed again it wasn't at you it was just at these supposed numbers that are "hard facts" when all the sources were just from advertisements... (Heck it is sort of like the HD advertisements I see where Comcast says they have more and then the next one is the Dish claiming they have the most...)