Why are you supposed to place biomax every 3 months? I understand that the chemicals in carbon get exhausted and need replacement, but as far as i understand the biomax is just a porous surface that allows beneficial bacteria to grow. if this is the case, why would it ever need replacement? are they just saying this to sell more product?
why do you have to replace biomax?
- Thread starter yemista
- Start date
do you just rinse it every month? on the biomax package it says to replace every 3 months. both aquaclear and fluval recommend this, but i dont see any reason to
wow, im so glad i know this. ive wasted so much money on filter media that i didnt have to waste. thanx guys
It looses it's porosity. Bacteria grow in the pores and die there and there isn't a way to clean it out. Hence change it for maximum effect. This is true for most sintered materials and such. But don't change it all out at once!
Dr Joe
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Dr Joe
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Never replace bio media, if it gets dirty, use the existing tank water to rinse, if you rinse with tap water, it will kill all the beneficial bacteria.
Dr Joe;2103577; said:
would it then be ok to take maybe half of it, rinse it under really hot tap water to wash away the dead bacteria stuck in the pores, and then reuse it? if i do this to only half the other half can seed the bacteria
It's true that some of the surface area will eventually be lost in these highly porous medias, but I suspect that this is due primarily to the accumulation of sediment, rather than other factors. Nonetheless, you would expect to see some loss in sa over time. Most of us will remove at least superficial debris by rinsing the media with tank water each time we perform filter maintenance, but this topical rinsing probably does relatively little to deep clean the pores. Usually, the amount of biomedia employed is sufficiently robust to compensate for this dimunition in sa. For example, four years ago I set up my canister filters with Ehfisubstrat Pro. The fish have gotten larger and the volumes of food consumed have also increased...so more nitrogenous waste is being released. Yet, four years later, there has been no indication that the biologic media is failing to assimilate this waste....AND I have never changed or supplemented the media. The other thing to keep in mind is that if you elect to discard and replace say 1/3 of the media to replace "lost surface area", you are also throwing out 1/3 of your bacteria. So, there is a cost associated with this maneuver...not to mention the cost of the media, which can be substantial. My recommendation is that you simply rinse the media with tank water and forget about it, until such time that you see that it is no longer sufficient to handle your bioload.