K1 Media

[Jack_L]

I’ve been searching the forums and haven't seen much mention of K1 media. I’m wondering if anyone else here uses it in a saltwater application? I previously used it in my sump when I had a freshwater setup, keeping it tumbling in the return section. It stayed remarkably clean, required very little maintenance, and provided a massive amount of surface area for beneficial bacteria. While I occasionally had to clear the slot in the baffles in my ruby sump where it would sometimes clog, the self-cleaning nature of the tumbling media worked great. Is K1 media simply not used in the saltwater hobby? Thanks!

 

[mcarroll]

Isn't that brass shavings?

 

[Jack_L]

no, its plastic, looks like pasta wagon wheels. IIRC it came from europe sewage treatmant plants

 

[mcarroll]

Reefers don't typically need bio-media like that since the rock in the tank takes care of all that.

No surprise you don't see mention of that kind of stuff.

If you dig back in other forums to the 1990's, various bio media was a lot more typical since lots of people were still converting fish tanks over to reef tanks.

But the Berlin Method kinda defined the excellent base formula coming out of that period....live rock and a protein skimmer, and that was all you really needed.

That's when folks started yanking out their bio-towers.

 

[PrattysReef]

It definitely could be used, i used it in the past but phased it out. Was getting enough biological filtration from my rock alone.

 

[jon93]

In each of my tanks (QT, main, and my spouses) I have a medium size bag of it. In the QT tanks it's inside the canister filter.

 

[Useful_Idiot]

I threw 5 liters of K1 micro in a 20 gallon tank with live sand from indo pacific sea farms and fed it until I got some bacteria growing on the K1. Bagged it in a course mesh and threw it in my sump. Didn’t notice any improvement on my tank for the next few months. I would agitate the bags once in awhile and release the mulm. About a year in I moved it into direct flow between sump baffles to tumble and PH dropped significantly. I guess this is CO2 respiration from the bacteria and I decided I didn’t want that much mass using up oxygen in case of a power outage. I pulled all the media in a weeks time and got cyano that I haven’t been able to get rid of fo the past 3 months.

 

[Jack_L]

Thanks all for the replies. My thought is as long as I have nitrate then I have enough surface area for bacteria. I did an open style scape so there's not alot of base rock in the display. when it was running fresh I tried many different things kitty litter filters, k1 and the foam. But really once I got over the initial cycle no matter what I did I never had had ammonia or nitrite again. I did all that stuff to try to not have to do water changes but nothing really solved the need for water. In the end I was using poret foam and cleaning it once a month or so and then a bit of floss in final chamber before the return pump.

I didn't realize that biological filtration could cause CO2 issue in power outage.