Bio Filter Question

[nept2n]

Hi Everyone

I hope everyone had and excellent holiday with your families.

I've been away from the saltwater hobby for a while, at least since Hurricane Irma past thru Florida. Irma devastated my tank and there was no recovering from that. Having a love the hobby I started a freshwater system from my old 300 gallon reef. It was cheaper to start with. Part of the filter change that I made with the sumo was I started a 60 gallon brute garbage can with K2 media (moving bio filter) it worked great on the freshwater.

I've got the bug back and I am starting a new reef tank, smaller this time a 120. I will be starting a new build thread as soon as I have all the parts I need.

I've been searching on R2R for articles on moving bio filters. I found some articles on biopellets but nothing on K2. My question, can the K2 media be used in saltwater system? I plan on using it as a moving bed filter just as I did with the freshwater but on a smaller scale something like 5 gallons. If the K2 won't work what would you recommend? Are there big benefits to this type of filter?

Thanks for your help

 

[Feet4Fish]

Sure you can use K2 media on a moving marine bed. Marine moving bed sister are excellent and provide unmatched nitirification and are self cleaning. I use a Bashea moving bio filter with similar media and love it. Commercial away culture facilities commonly use moving beds (most often sand).

 

[nept2n]

That's great news as I had great success with it in freshwater. How big is your Bashea

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

What do you want it to accomplish? I doubt any reef tank needs assistance with nitrification after initial cycling.

 

[Feet4Fish]

8” diameter cylinder by 30” high

That's great news as I had great success with it in freshwater. How big is your Bashea

 

[nept2n]

Randy I don't want to have a ton of rock in the 120 so I wanted to add biological filtration to support the lack of rock in the display. Would Xport NO3 Bricks from Brightwell be a better choice?

 

[nept2n]

8” diameter cylinder by 30” high

That's more than triple the water volume I was planning on using

 

[nept2n]

Can anyone give me advice on this? I'm trying to keep my reef on the light side with rocks

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I’ve never actually heard of any reef tank, even those with less than normal rock, have a chronic issue with ammonia.

 

[brandon429]

Agreed. Even my lfs ran a sand-only 30 gal with about 100 baby clowns in it with only a skimmer and occasional water changes, decent feed. adding one won't hurt, but requires cleaning since its redundant surface area

 

[nept2n]

I’ve never actually heard of any reef tank, even those with less than normal rock, have a chronic issue with ammonia.

Randy, thank you. It sounds like I should keep it simple?

 

[nept2n]

Agreed. Even my lfs ran a sand-only 30 gal with about 100 baby clowns in it with only a skimmer and occasional water changes, decent feed. adding one won't hurt, but requires cleaning since its redundant surface area

Brandon, it sounds like you Randy are in favor of keeping it simple and not over complicate things. Thank you

 

[brandon429]

hey if it also helps just to factor applications where we really did test surface area limitations, in our sand rinse thread/ moving tanks home to home we have many many examples of people removing sand and reducing the live rock down some pounds/ cleaner new scape and they input the entire fish loading used to the prior sand + 100# of rock, not in any instance have I ever seen a lack of surface area apparent, we'd have to reduce the live rock 90% I bet and strip all sand and slow current to get a reading

it isnt harmful to hookup a canister filter or run seven at once thats for sure, its also fun knowing the rules for engagement in surface area design and we're really free to cut back or add on thats for sure.

people with fancy systems are trending towards throughput vs storage of waste nowadays, less surface area is a direct benefit in that kind of design. the older designs for Berlin style reefs were a lot like freshwater counterparts where we'd stack in orders and orders of surface area per gallon hoping for natural denitrification; we can see in most cases it just makes things harder to clean and control waste sinking although there are plenty of successful storage-type reefs still running. merely a trend Im noticing. nowadays people would rather catch mulm in roller mats than store it in rock or in the sand

 

[nept2n]

hey if it also helps just to factor applications where we really did test surface area limitations, in our sand rinse thread/ moving tanks home to home we have many many examples of people removing sand and reducing the live rock down some pounds/ cleaner new scape and they input the entire fish loading used to the prior sand + 100# of rock, not in any instance have I ever seen a lack of surface area apparent, we'd have to reduce the live rock 90% I bet and strip all sand and slow current to get a reading

it isnt harmful to hookup a canister filter or run seven at once thats for sure, its also fun knowing the rules for engagement in surface area design and we're really free to cut back or add on thats for sure.

people with fancy systems are trending towards throughput vs storage of waste nowadays, less surface area is a direct benefit in that kind of design. the older designs for Berlin style reefs were a lot like freshwater counterparts where we'd stack in orders and orders of surface area per gallon hoping for natural denitrification; we can see in most cases it just makes things harder to clean and control waste sinking although there are plenty of successful storage-type reefs still running. merely a trend Im noticing. nowadays people would rather catch mulm in roller mats than store it in rock or in the sand

Brandon, wow great info. I'll look for these threads. I am actually going bare bottom, no sand at all. so it was a concern till I read this.

 

[brandon429]

has good patterns of takedown, transfer, setup it at least helps to see some strange things like light reacclimation we've arrived at to ensure safe SPS xfer:

Official Sand Rinse and Tank Transfer thread

If you are reading this thread to cure a tank invasion from a link I sent you, we do not need to identify your type of invasion here we do not need you to test anything at anytime regarding nitrate, phosphate etc Above all, we do not need to see a microscope slide picture of your invasion at...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[nept2n]

has good patterns of takedown, transfer, setup it at least helps to see some strange things like light reacclimation we've arrived at to ensure safe SPS xfer:

Official Sand Rinse and Tank Transfer thread

If you are reading this thread to cure a tank invasion from a link I sent you, we do not need to identify your type of invasion here we do not need you to test anything at anytime regarding nitrate, phosphate etc Above all, we do not need to see a microscope slide picture of your invasion at...

www.reef2reef.com

Brandon a lot to read thru but managed. Thank you for the link and more links really awesome read. I liked the NSB thread although most of the started with a SB I will definitely startup with NSB.