No one will approach the "too much filtration level". No one. Unless you have money to burn.
So aim for it. See what I did there?
So aim for it. See what I did there?
Question about too much filtration. Such a thing?
- Thread starter ZEROPILOT
- Start date
Redundancy. Not only redundancy, but the bandwidth to deal with dead fish, unplanned non-water change periods and non-filter cleaning periods. etc.
You see, its all about bandwidth and redundancy. Unless you have the ability to maintain a razor thin level of excellence. You dig?
Its about buffering... having a high overhead of extra filtering means you get no significant spikes from anything.. overfeeding, adding 200+fish at once, a dead fish you can't reach, ect.. won't cause a dent on readings. These are all things that are usually advised against.. but with over filtering can be mitigated.
Not only that, undersized engines will have to work that much harder AND be prone to breakdown that much more faster than over sized engines.
I will go as far to say this:
Show me someone who is satisfied with their filtration and I will show you someone who has a drip change system or is an expert par excellence. I'm neither, therefore I over filter.
And by the way, I never ever ever check my parameters. If I did, I might be more inclined to narrow the band, but I don't, and I don't think I ever will. Haven't done it in 30 plus years so, yeah.
The "55 gallon" rating on the filters is likely not a rating for how you are stocking the tank, so running two of them is perfectly fine. If you are thinking of running a 3rd, 4th or even a 5th filter (taking it to an extreme), at that point you are better of taking all that money you would have spent on the filters and upgrading to a larger tank. Increasing water volume will stabilize water parameters much better than running 5 filters on a 55G.
I agree with you here. Redundancy and having the extra capacity to deal with an ammonia spike is definitely a good thing. I was taking the example to an extreme...I have seen sumps on here that were so packed to the brim with ceramic bio-rings that they would have been better off spending all that money wasted on that bio on upgrading to a larger tank. At a certain point, the money thrown at extremely overfiltering a tank would be better put to use by upgrading to a larger setup.
My point about adding a ton of bio-media is that there actually is a law of diminishing return when it comes to bio-media. When the bio-media ends up acting more like mechanical media, then you have too much bio-filtration.
I would love to have a drip system, but my filter serves it's purpose well. I am happy with it. Cleaning filter socks every week is a pain, but I am removing waste from the system. If I had 15 filter socks instead of 3, I could get away with cleaning them less often since they wouldn't clog as quickly, but my water parameteres would not be as good as they are because I wouldn't be removing waste as frequently. This is another example of less being more.
And by the way, I never ever ever check my parameters. If I did, I might be more inclined to narrow the band, but I don't, and I don't think I ever will. Haven't done it in 30 plus years so, yeah.
Admittedly, I rarely check my water parameters anymore either. I'm not promoting narrowing the band to the point where an extra feeding is going to result in ammonia readings. I'm taking the OPs question to mean is there a point of diminishing returns and in my opinion there is.
