How does bacteria grow better on bio-balls, light or no light?

[aaron]

I had a quick look at your setup in you gallery, It looks like you have a 50+ Gal tank with overflow and Sump with a reasonable amount of live rock in the display tank. Am i right?
So in terms of filtration, the most important questions are: what type of skimmers are you currently running?
Canister filters, fluidised bed filters and refugiums are all possibilities but for someone on a budget they are not absolutely essential. A number of people on the web site with great tanks only have skimmers and live rock for all of their filtration. So i would suggest if you want to upgrade your filtation rather than build anything like an additional trickle filter, save you money and buy some more live rock or upgrade your skimmer.

 

[jawwad2004]

i vote get yourself a big skimmer and get rid of your cannister filter and them bioballs.... i also like the other ideas for a fuge and live rock rubble in the fuge would be cool to...

Get the biggest, strongest most efficient skimmer you can possible afford, thats what I would say.

 

[cali_reef]

How would you light a 4" PVC pipe so all the bioballs will get lit? It would be a good algae scrubber filter in the case you can get light on all the bio balls.

 

[reefs4life]

- aaron my tank is a 75 gallon reef ready tank. I do have a sump but it does not look great. The skimmers aren't all that great but they are getting the job done, one is a corallife skimmer and the other is some cheap one that i bout in eBay I dont relaly consider it much of a help. There are about 100lbs+ of live rock and I am working on getting at least another 50lbs sometime soon.
- cali_reef I wasn't planning on lighting the pipe, that the reason I asked the question. If they needed to be lit I wouldn't have thought of building it.

 

[Aqua Pro Builder]

I have no idea how to change my currently running system to a sump/refuge, the age that I have posted is my true age and I'm not really able to get things I need as well as anyone older than me. And if I would need to use any cash I'm not really loaded with it. I'm not whining or asking for anything, it's just that I'm trying to find the cheapest, yet most effecient method of filtering my tank. And my LFS uses wet/dry for all their coral/fish tanks and they're doing fine (some of you may know the place, Exotic Pet Warehouse, in Yonkers) I'd need someone to look at my set-up and help me fix it, I think that would be the easiest way.

Can you show us a pic of your sump?

Most LFS use wet/dry due to heavy bio load and easier/cheaper(comparing to sand bed) maintenance when it comes to rid the system of diease. LFS that uses sand bed usually has ick in their system because they cannot afford to dump the sand too frequently. Time, labor and money are concerns they faced.

Wet dry is designed to aerate water and break down ammonia not nitrate, therefore, if your goal is to remove nitrate, you should look for some other filtrations such as DSB, refuge with macro algae......

 

[reefs4life]

If I take a pic you wont really be able to see what's inside because there's a lot of encrusting algae on the glass. But to give you an idea it's a 20 gallon tank with medium-grained sand and in a corner there's a big lump of chaetomorpha, there are some pumps laying on the sand (intake facing up), a skimmer and a fludized bed hang on to it, the overflow tube, and 2 heaters. Thats pretty much it.