What are y’alls experience with using Bio balls? I have a 135 with 3 Marineland Penguin 200s running and was thinking about adding Bio balls in each. Is it necessary or really helpful? Currently I’m not having any issues but I’m always for making my aquarium better. What are y’alls thoughts?
Thoughts on using Bio Balls
- Thread starter Young Skywalker28
- Start date
Bio balls will suffice surface area for bacteria to grow on. I personally have bio balls in one of my trickle filter trays.
Absolutely not just swish them around in a bucket of aquarium water removed in a bucket during water changes to keep any gunk off.
Hello; Probably not replaced unless they somehow become damaged or begin to break down.
Hello; This. Most of the time a rinse will loosen the gunk well enough. However after a long time there can be a need to do a more thorough cleaning. Keep in mind the bio-balls and any other such is just to provide a place for the beneficial bacteria (bb) to colonize. The bb form a sticky film on many surfaces in a tank and my take is need some water flow across to enable the film of bb to take up the toxic ammonia and nitrites.
If the tank gunk gets too built up on the surfaces my take is it sort of smothers the bb. So I from time to time (usually a long time of at least months) I give my bio surfaces a better cleaning. I get this also removes more of the bb film so I do it in parts. Clean some but leave the rest alone. A month or so later clean some of the other and so on.
Bio balls, lava rock, ceramic rings, Scrubbies, all do the same thing, they are surfaces for beneficial bio film bacteria to live on.
That population of bacteria will equalize and coincide with the amount of ammonia and nitrite produced by you fish ever time. If you have a sufficient amount of media to hold bio film for your stocking level, that bacterial population will not grow higher because you add more, it falls or rises with available food produced by your fish population.
Replacing it with new media does nothing, except maybe causes an ammonia spike because you've removed a large population of beneficial bacteria if you remove old bio media.
Mechanical media can be replaced as it falls apart.
I rinse mechanical media such as matting, or filter socks until they fall apart and become useless, but not before,
I would only replace bio media if a serious disease ravaged the tank it serviced..
That population of bacteria will equalize and coincide with the amount of ammonia and nitrite produced by you fish ever time. If you have a sufficient amount of media to hold bio film for your stocking level, that bacterial population will not grow higher because you add more, it falls or rises with available food produced by your fish population.
Replacing it with new media does nothing, except maybe causes an ammonia spike because you've removed a large population of beneficial bacteria if you remove old bio media.
Mechanical media can be replaced as it falls apart.
I rinse mechanical media such as matting, or filter socks until they fall apart and become useless, but not before,
I would only replace bio media if a serious disease ravaged the tank it serviced..
I use plastic bio balls in some of my cansiters. Also use ceramic rings, seachem matrix, pot scrubbers and the nuggets aquaclear filters come with. Nothing wrong with bio balls at all, but I'm not sure I would buy them specifically, there's so much other media that can be had. Hard to say if it's better or not! lol
