would this work?

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brich999

Jack Dempsey
MFK Member
Jul 3, 2010
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New Hampshire
ok im trying to design a high flow wet dry out of a 100g tank i have. its 72x18x18. i know the BB needs air and water to live, what if instead of a drip plate, it was just filled with water and bioballs with tons of airstones on bottom pushing air up? my though is this would be easier to keep heavy flow (approx 500gph) than a traditional wet dry. i may be wrong though, so let me know. any input would be great!

ps i know im not great with MS paint but i tried

wet dry.jpg
 
What you would have is a sump.
Submerged media can still do a great job of moving food and oxygen to the baceria.
You might not need a bunch of air stones if your water has a decent amount of oxygen just from movement.
 
agreed if you were to place you intake hoses above the sump so they create a splash into the sump nothing huge but just some water movement then that should be enough air exchange
 
so then bioballs wouldnt be the preferred method? im just thinking of a way to support huge amount of water through a small area (100g tank) thanks guys
 
i was thinking with the airstones, the water would be at a constant boil and would keep everything even better, but maybe im wrong
 
i remember doin somthing like that on a turtle tank at a lfs i used to work at. the only thing i thought that maybe an issue is that there would not be enough o2/air exposure to properly hit the media..

in a conventioal wet dry the surface area on the media has plenty of o2 exposure to break down the amonia and do its thing. but with airstone bubbles and the media fully submerged its a fast exposure to air and o2.

i guess it just wouldnt be that effecient? just my 2 pennies.....GL
 
I don't see that working effectively with bioballs. If you want to have everything submerged your much better off going with a ceramic or sintered glass media that has hundreds of times as much surface area. I just don't think you'll get any benefit out of submerged bioballs, and i don't think the air stones will make any difference at all.

I could be wrong, but I just don't see how it could be efficient. I use all my bioballs/scrubbies in a wet/dry set up and seachem matrix in the same system but under water. Works great. Good luck though, and let us know how it works out if you try it.
 
Two words, with huge differences.
Efficient and Sufficient.
I agree that ceramic media is a more efficient use of space available, but submerged bio balls could very well be sufficient for the bio load.
When we consider the bacteria colonies will only be as large as the available food, having an excess of media serves no purpose.
 
i just thought with bioballs, they would be in constant rolling motion and it would maybe work like a boiling soup of bioballs. lol ill have to do conventional wetr dry
 
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