Filtering media in sump

swiss1939

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I am wondering if media bags with bio balls is a decent amount of biological filtration vs bio bricks? I realize the bio bricks are advertised as having way more surface area but I was able to get bio balls for dirt cheap.

I have a few different things going on in my sump to try to get as much biological filtration as possible. Sump has skimmer (turned off for now) plus a bunch of rock in it so that I didn't need as much in the display tank, plus I am trying two media bags with Marineland Bio-filter Balls instead of bio bricks for now. Just wondering if using bio balls in a filter bag like this is actually doing what I intend which is to add some biological filtration that can be easily removed and dropped into a temporary qt tank if/when needed. Or am I just wasting space with these two media bags and bio balls?

I used 2 packages of these (180 balls) cause they were like $6 total and just put them in 2 BRS media bags. Funny cause they were $3/ea. When i bought them. Now they are $12/ea. Either way it seemed much cheaper than buying bio bricks for the same purpose.


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andrewey

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Here are some numbers to help ballpark the difference. Most live rock is around square meter of surface area per gram (Marine pure is in the same ballpark, I'm unsure about biobricks). From some rough calculations, bioballs have a surface area of 0.001-0.002 square meters per gram. While surface area isn't the whole story when it comes to filtration, you can see that live rock has about a thousand times the surface area per weight compared with bioballs. There are some other considerations and I'm not even saying that you should/shouldn't use bioballs, but it's helpful to be able to compare apples to apples.

For a better reference, there's a document produced by Paul Pustulka floating around that directly compared ammonia processing of various medias that you can use that more closely addresses your question and would allow you to get a rough estimate of the relative efficacy of bioballs vs. other medias. I don't remember the exact numbers, but there was an extremely stark difference between bioballs and the rest of the media in the ability to process ammonia effectively.

Ultimately, if space is limited and you want the best "bang for your buck", you are probably better off with spending the $6 on $6 worth of live rock or any of the other materials you were investigating. Now that you have bought the bioballs, it's up to you whether you need any additional biologcal filtration for your tank or whether other materials might achieve your goals of setting up a QT tank (e.g. sponge filter).
 
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swiss1939

swiss1939

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Well i've got what I believe is enough rock in both the DT and sump to sustain my system on its own. 1lbs per gal total system. I have about 13 lbs of rock in the sump, 1 big one you can see, and then two or three smaller pieces in each other compartment.. being the overflow section prior to the filter bag overflow section, and in the return pump section. I realize the rocks in the overflow section probably will capture some detritus prior to the filter bag as it comes down from DT overflow, but my tank is so new there is not enough detritus accumulation as of now cause I just am not doing a lot of feeding with minimal livestock in it for a while. So the bio balls/media bags was merely an idea of an easy way to have bacteria seeded material that can quickly transition to a QT as needed, then be cleaned off and returned to be reseeded when done. The DT has about 28lbs of rock. I expect that in a year or so when my tank is more fully stocked with livestock, I will remove some of the smaller rocks from the return and overflow sections of the sump, and add bio bricks, but the bio bricks did not seem necessary this early in the tank life cycle.

Additionally... I am wondering if all that white dusting on the surfaces of the sump and heater is the actual bacterial culture spreading on the surfaces of the sump? If so then its a good sight that I can see it starting to cover everything in the sump and the DT.
 
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andrewey

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The white dust doesn't look quite like what you would expect with a bacterial mat (which is usually only seen with carbon dosing or excessive bacterial additions). To me, it looks like particulate in the form of detritus or particles from the rock or sand.
 
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swiss1939

swiss1939

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Here's another question. If I were to use bio bricks as a media to start a temporary qt, when done with the qt and prior to returning the bio bricks to the main system, wouldn't I have to completely kill off the bio brick and clean it completely before returning to the main system? This seems like it would require much more time/effort when not maintaining a permanent qt tank. The filter bags and bio balls I realize are not a whole ton of surface area, but hopefully enough for the short term needs. Reason being, its a whole heck of a lot faster to nuke and restart a media bag and some plastic bio-balls vs a piece of rock/bio brick.
 

LeftyReefer

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Did you rinse your sand before adding to the tank? The white dust looks like dust/silt that settled out from your sand maybe?
 
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swiss1939

swiss1939

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No rinse. Could probably also be dust from the rocks as I broke some of the dry rock apart and it was dusty prior to going into the tank. I'm sure it can only help the bacteria with more places to attach!
 

LeftyReefer

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No rinse. Could probably also be dust from the rocks as I broke some of the dry rock apart and it was dusty prior to going into the tank.


For sure.
I started with all brand new dry rock and sand and it all needing rinsing, badly.

The rocks were full of dust, sand, grit, rocks, shells, etc... I power washed mine to get all the gunk out and to open up all the pores. I was shocked how much crap came out of brand new dry rocks... Same with the sand. One bucket of sand took me two days to get all of the fine dust/silt rinsed out.
 

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If you have your bio media in the middle chamber of the sump, do you need to do anything (I.e small pump) for movement/circulation. I’m asking because In that center chamber most of the water flow seems to be surface level between the baffles of the first and third chambers. I was thinking about this, this morning and was concerned the bioball area would become a giant detritus trap.
 
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