I have no links to the Biowish company, I just thought that I'd share my own positive experience of the excellent Biowish Bio Ball product.
My story started when I setup my first marine tank (12g) in January, with RO/DI water and live rock. By late March I had a cleanup crew, false perc and a bi-colour blenny happily living in the tank. Zero ammonia, Nitrite and Nitrate.
Unbeknown to me, my Hydrometer (the floaty needle type, not optical type) had become encrusted with minerals of some description and was reading low; therefore I was adding massive amounts of salt to my tank each week (and then daily when things started dying and I was emergency water changing
I immediately purchased a proper refractometer and corrected the salt level over a number of days. The tank inhabitants were wiped out. Luckily the ammonia, nitrite and nitrate remained at zero; possibly due to my heavy maintanence
Then came the algae bloom....... I didn't have any dead animal remains in the tank but the Green, then Hair, then Brow/Red algae grew to cover the LR and sand to over an inch thick in places. I reduced the light to a few hours a day, I tried to add a sea hair (which despite all poisons reading zero promptly died), and the new cleanup crew couldn't cope. I don't have the test kit for phosphates or mg.
I purchased some Biowish Bio Bombs out of desperation. WOW! Within two days the water column looked cleaner, I'm now in week three and 70% of the inch thick algae has dissolved. I have noticed Nitrates creeping up again over the last few days, presumably due to the algae's mass extinction. Tonight I changed out the bio bomb media, holly molly does the old media smell BAD! This bio bomb must be doing something great for it to smell that bad!
The instructions say to change the media monthly, but my tank started out full of algae, so perhaps I have overloaded the ability of the ball to absorb nitrates a week early...
There appears to be very little documented results with this brilliant little filter that looks like a toilet detergent block. If anyeone else has any personal experience, please add it here. If you have an algae problem and think you have covered all the basic fixes to no avail, I'd recommend you try a bio bomb for around a tenner!
P.S. I haven't scraped my now crystal clear glass in over a week!!
