Cleaning bioballs

[TBone303]

I Have a 16 gallon seacube with a built in sump using bio-balls. I have heard that bio-balls can cause high levels of nitrates in your water column. Can I take the bioballs out and clean the debris off of them or would I just be wasting my time.

[tinyreef]

i'm actually surprised this topic hasn't come up in the couple of months i've been part of this board.

 

my take on it is you can keep the bio-balls. they're just taking the place of of dense LR imo. the only differences i see are that the balls are an inert substance versus the slow dissolution of most LR (CaCO3) and the lower flow in some areas of good LR whereas bio-balls typically allow easier water flow (anaerobic bacteria issue).

 

i wouldn't clean off the bio-balls, other than a quick rinse imo of clean sw. the periodic slagging mulm can be an issue tho but it should be the same in anything else (i.e. LR, toy soldiers, eggcrate, etc.).

 

another option i do is carbon. (in packets not loose!) they have tremendous surface area, temporary ab/adsorption properties (until saturation), and provide another carbon source for the system.

 

if you remove the bio-balls you can put in some rock fragments. tufa or dry coral are good. i always use lava but many peeps are wary of it. i always pre-soak in fw for day(s) tho.

[DeskJockey]

one day I was talking with this guy at the LFS and somehow we started talking about his balls:x hahahaha Bio-balls thats is

 

Anyway he mentioned that he dropped a few bristle worms in the bio-ball compartment when he noticed they were getting funky and within a couple weeks they were clean. It makes sense to me. The bristle worms would consume trapped food and detritus or anything else that was dying back there as though in a DSB.

[SteveC]

Originally posted by tinyreef

my take on it is you can keep the bio-balls.  they're just taking the place of of dense LR imo.  the only differences i see are that the balls are an inert substance versus the slow dissolution of most LR (CaCO3) and the lower flow in some areas of good LR whereas bio-balls typically allow easier water flow (anaerobic bacteria issue).

 

But how would you get denitrification with bioballs? They lack the anaerobic zones you get with porous live rock or a DSB. So in that regard it seems to me they wouldn't be the same as live rock, unless what you mean by "dense LR" is that it's not porous even on a microscopic level (e.g., "live glass" or something).

[SteveC]

Speaking of live glass, one thing you might want to consider is using some kind of sintered glass media instead of bioballs. I've read discussion in FW forums about using stuff like Siporax because the pores are deep enough that anaerobic denitrifying bacteria can colonize deep inside. I've been meaning to try this on my FW tank but haven't gotten around to it yet.

 

OTOH, you could put some dead coral rock in there and culture your own live rock!

[tinyreef]

steve,

i'm sorry, i didn't mean you'd get equivalent anaerobic results, just some. the bracketed part probably should've gone in the middle of the statement. good porous/light live rock is still preferable. bb's still offer a fair amount of filtration for its cost. the CaCO3 dissolution is a plus imo.

 

you'd still get some anerobic areas if you have a sufficient amount of bb's and postioned correctly. minimal but compared to some 'live rock/boulders' i've seen they may be as or more effective. mind you i'm not comparing them to marshall, fiji, vanatu, etc.

 

you'd want dead ends for anaerobic action (low flow) and bb's would not give you a lot of that but you should still have some. that's why i prefer lava, very porous and very cheap (compared to real LR).

 

that glass option sounds interestng. i had been thinking about biopore sealed on one-side (to shunt the water flow but still provide surface area).