Bioballs or no Bioballs

[mskvarenina]

This will probably be a hot topic but in setting up a new FOWLR tank with a sump and skimmer, what are the pros and cons of using (or not using) bioballs?

10+ years ago when I did my trickle filter I used bioballs but that was before LR was a popular filtration method.

 

[bertyboy69]

Its its a fowlr , means fish onlt with live rock , if you have enough live rock in your tank then additional bio filtration is unnecessary , if its just a fish only tank with some fake corals and decorations then you will need the bioballs for bio filtration

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I317 using Reefs

 

[mskvarenina]

Yes it's going to be a FOWLR. It's a 93g tank. I've got 75 lbs of BRS reef saver "dead" rock coming Monday and I plan to seed the tank with 20 lbs of LR from my LFS to jumpstart the biological on the new dead rock.

So all that said, what do I really put into the sump? Just the prefilter to catch all the large debris, the skimmer and maybe the some carbon, GFR and other bagged media?

 

[bertyboy69]

Thats plenty of live rock for filtration so definrtly no bio media is needed , everything else is up to you and how much space you have to work with , i suggest a skimmer and filter sock definrtly and then if you have a large sump go with a refugium as well if not you can use carbon and gfo to remove phosphates , or an algae scrubber , or none if the above , all depends on how much space and budget you have and what you want to acomplish combined with regular maintenence

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[mskvarenina]

The sump is really big, probably 40-45 gallons I think. Here are a few pics. It's got a lot of nice chambers. The skimmer room is 10 x 14. I just bought a Lifereef skimmer that arrived today.

The refugium is 6 x 29, narrow but nice and long, all along the front window. I'll keep it facing out so I can enjoy it. The "bio" box is about 9 x 12 with a few egg crate layers. For now I'll remove all the bio balls and leave it empty except for the pre-filter. Down the road maybe a media bag with carbon or something else

 

[bertyboy69]

looks good just ditch the bioballs and buy a filter sock holder or make one , and you can use a bag of media but i suggest using a reactor much more efficient and costs very little

 

[Dre]

Turn the sump into a refugium with some dragon's breath aglae. With bio balls you're creating a nitrate factory, your nitrate will be sky high.

 

[duromega]

turn the sump into a refugium with some dragon's breath aglae. With bio balls you're creating a nitrate factory, your nitrate will be sky high.

+1

no bioballs!

beautiful sump btw !!

 

[mskvarenina]

Turn the sump into a refugium with some dragon's breath aglae. With bio balls you're creating a nitrate factory, your nitrate will be sky high.

I do remember in my last tank my nitrates were off the charts and that was with a trickle filter and bioballs. I thought though that that was just the natural progress of waste through the cycle which never came down w/o water changes.

 

[mskvarenina]

beautiful sump btw !!

Thanks, I can't wait to see it in action. I spent 2 weeks scouring the forums and stores looking for a sump or sump design I could build, eventually I decided all the commercial sumps were too expensive for what you got and I was going to try building my own. Then this one came along from the manufacturer of my tank. The price was right and it's huge so I thought I'd give it a try first.

 

[ctcorals]

1 garllon 2-3LB live rock,then u donnt need extra bio ball anymore,LR r much better than those bio balls lol

 

[beastium]

Bioballs r ok on the bottom of the drip plate but for the main trickle part, I think it's best to remove them after cycling. Get some poly filter and chemi pure

 

[Sharkbait420]

Bioballs are fine and more effective at converting ammonia to nitrates. If you plan on a high bioload or messy fish then it might be beneficial to add them. Live rock isn't that's great at converting nitrates to a nitrogen gas. If it was people wouldn't set up refugiums with algae to remove nitrates and woukd have no nitrates when testing for it.

The only reason why bioballs are nitrate factories because it is doing what it is suppose to do and convert ammonia. People also drop the balls in and forget about them. Either use a filter sock as a pre filter or clean the balls every so often.

 

[mskvarenina]

So I'm bringing this topic back up for additional discussion.

I've put in about 120 lbs of LR into my 90g tank and it's now overloaded with rock providing less swim space for my fish (It will be a FOWLR tank).

So I was thinking about the biological filtration provided by the LR and thought to myself the same thing happens with bioballs. That begged the question what is so bad or worng with bioballs?

So I was considering removing some of the LR to provide more swim space then putting a quantity of Marine Pure, which is a ceramic like bioball material with alot more surface area than plastic bioballs.

My sump will have a refugium where I will grow macro algae to control the nitrates.

So if I do all this, then what is the real problem against bioballs (or these ceramic equivalents)?

At the end of the day I want to overstock my tank with fish and provide them enough swim space so I would think the ceramic bioballs in the sump would be able to manage the load the LR was doing and the refug will address the nitrate concerns?

 

[Dre]

As the years fly by we come up with better techniques, throw out the old and the useless. Live rock, bio balls and ceramic ring/balls been around for ages. The concept is to provide the most surface area for beneficial bacteria to grow henc the odd shapes of the bio balls. Beneficial bacteria break down ammonia to nitrite, nitrite is then broken down to less toxic nitrate. Bio balls are not bad they do the same thing as the others mentioned. My advice is to plant dragon's breath algae in sump with 24/7 lighting in addition with water changes to use up the nitrate..

 

[bertyboy69]

If you have good quality pirous rock say between 60 to 90 pounds , and a shallow sand bed , you will not need any additional bio material and adding any will only cause u problens , like ive said bioballs are great and i think people who say they are nitrate factories and comepletely useless are co.oletely wrong , however when u already have so much rock you absokutky do not need more bio fiktration , bio filter only converts ammonia to nitrite to nitrate , and in that sense even 60 pounds of good rocj will be way more than enough , and then you need something like a refugium or just plain old water changes to keep nitrates in check i believe in a fo tank about 40 to 50 ppm of nitrate is safe which is very high

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[Dre]

If you have good quality pirous rock say between 60 to 90 pounds , and a shallow sand bed , you will not need any additional bio material and adding any will only cause u problens , like ive said bioballs are great and i think people who say they are nitrate factories and comepletely useless are co.oletely wrong , however when u already have so much rock you absokutky do not need more bio fiktration , bio filter only converts ammonia to nitrite to nitrate , and in that sense even 60 pounds of good rocj will be way more than enough , and then you need something like a refugium or just plain old water changes to keep nitrates in check i believe in a fo tank about 40 to 50 ppm of nitrate is safe which is very high

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I317 using Reefs

Sorry to say all Rubbish. People keep well stocked fish tanks with little or no rocks.
Check the LFS's.

 

[bertyboy69]

Sorry to say all Rubbish. People keep well stocked fish tanks with little or no rocks.
Check the LFS's.

im aware, your actually proving my point, in a LFS they have mutiple systems plumbeed into a central "sump" which is usually a very large scale wet dry filter with like 100 gallons of bioballs, but they dont use both

my whole point is one or the other but not both
both will cause higher nitrates with no benefit

 

[mskvarenina]

Well in general we're really talking about surface area. For a LFS, of course they need to use big wet/dry filter with bioballs or other media as they need to support a large number of fish. It would not make sense to use LR in their tanks as it would make it hard to catch the fish for sale.

And as far as their nitrates, I'm sure the constant water changes they do more or less as they replenish the water removed form the sale of a fish, their nitrates remain low.

The open question is denitrification with bioballs or other media. MarinePure claims to denitrify when using their large blocks presumably because deep within the block their is less oxygen.

And in my case I'm setting up a refugium so if I do this right, the refug will attack the nitrates anyway so having the MarinePure will simply allow me to have a much higher bio/fish load.

 

[purebullet417]

No bioballs