BIO Balls or not?

[tedstan]

I'm trying to decide if I really need Bio balls. I know some people swear by them and some people don't like them. A little about my tank, I have a 175 bow front with a 40 gal. sump and a 50 gal rock tank for the added water and filtration that the live rock can add. I have a DSB with 160 lbs. of live sand, and somewhere around 400-450 lbs. of live rock. I have 2 vortech powerheads in the tank and 3 power heads in the rock tank for the circulation. I do water changes of 30 gal. about every 6 weeks. The water prarameters averages are
Salinity 1.024 - 1.026
DKH 8 -11
CAL. 480 - 520
PHOS. .25
NITRATE 0
AMMONIA 0
I was doing a major cleanning today and just started wondering how other people felt about BIO Balls

 

[ahayes13]

i had bioballs back in the beginning and they were awful. just a breeding ground for junk to adhere to in there... and help increase nitrates. i cut out a side panel when i had my old sump and removed the tray that held the sponge and cut a hole in it for a bag to fit in and i threw out the bioballs. i was glad i went to the filter bags and my tank as a whole just seemed cleaner and better off...
but like you said some people will tell you they are fine and its a more old school way of doing it i guess. if you were to keep them i would say they need to be taken out and cleaned OFTEN...

 

[cherokee_dude]

Nope. No real benefit with an established tank that size. MAYBE to start colonization of bacteria in the VERY beginning, but I'd toss them once up and running.

 

[Russellaqua]

I'm very neutral on them. They need to be cleaned a lot but can add beneficial bacterial filtration to the system. With so much sand and live rock though I think you're better off without them. They're just one more thing to clean in a tank that size.

 

[bsink]

absolutly not. i think these have long been debunked as a necessary addition to any reef tank. IMO just breeding ground for detritus and nitrates. I honestly cant tell you any nice tanks that use them.

 

[jason]

Changed from bio balls to live rock rubble.

 

[killingseed2000]

not worth it, you need to clean them like once a week or they can cause problems. switch to LR rubble and cheato.

 

[xrayrider]

Not only that, if you clean them like you should, you kill the bacteria, and it has to reastablish, then you clean them again. They are a waste of space that could contain somethin more benificial, like a refugium, or live rock.

 

[tedstan]

Thanks everyone for your input. I believe that I will take the Bio Balls out.

 

[Old School Reefer]

OK so that leads me to a similar question. In the bio-ball area of my sump I replaced the bio-balls with LR rubble. I've done this since the very beginning of this tank and haven't touched the LR since (about three years).

So wouldn't the LR rubble have the same reaction as the bio-balls? A place for crap to build up and cause nitrates? I've never been able to control nitrates and everything in my tank (SPS heavy) is doing fine and growing like mad. I'd be happy with a nitrate reading that just showed up on the chart! :sad:
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