Bio Ball Question

[tommygunn17]

75 Gallon Has Been Set Up For Over A Year.. Some Coral & Some Fish R In The Tank. Recently Took A Sample Of Water To Cappacino Bay Fish Store In Roswell. They Told Me That My Water Was Better Than 90% Of What Other People Bring In. Anyways He Also Told Me To Start Removing Your Bio Balls From My Sump Because They Hold Bacteria In The Water ,,,,
Is This True.. Pls. Help
T.

 

[blind1993]

they turn into nitrate factories. they do that because they catch deterius and something turns them into nitrates and then they go to your water and ruin the water quality. if you dont want to remove them you can just clean them every 3 days.

 

[jetchris]

yes i would slowly take them out and replace w/ LR rubble

 

[tommygunn17]

L/R rubble?? will this have to be cleaned as well like the bio balls?
THX, TOMMY

 

[bzwaagstra]

I have been cleaning my balls ever since I can remember. But every three days! I only clean every month or so.:blush:

 

[roland jacques]

I don't believe it is the detritus that causes the nitrates when it comes to Bio balls. Bio balls cause nitrates because they work so well at converting/consuming waste. They house only aerobic bacteria (byproduct nitrate). weather they are clean or dirty they produce nitrates. The anaerobic bacteria in the live rock can't compete in the consuming arena and you get high nitrates.

 

[skriz]

You don't have to clean live rock.

 

[seedless reefer]

Liver rock? Sounds much worse than a kidney stone thats for sure.

 

[dannybradley]

This is an old debate. Here's my take on it.

Roland is on the right path with aerobic bacteria. Bioballs are just surface area intended to provide a place for the bacteria to grow. The reason we trickle water over them is so that they're exposed to air. Air on average has 20,000x more oxygen than water.

Now, when you remove the bioballs you reduce the amount of surface area in your sump for the bacteria to live on. This slows down nitrfication. This will in turn give you less ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate production, leaving the proteins in the water longer, allowing the skimmer to pull them out before it is reduced to nitrate. The bacteria may just colonize the live rock in the tank more heavily in that case.

It is HIGHLY debatable that this method actually yields better results. I think people are just lazy and don't want to clean a prefilter, so they remove it. Then they don't want to clean their bioballs, so they remove those. As for live rock? Who cleans live rock? I think you see my point.

An aside for the live rock - yeah... it is more porous than a bioball which *could* allow for denitrification if it weren't for the water moving so quickly through the sump.

I say keep a great prefilter in front of your bioballs, and keep it clean. You'll remove more particulate waste that way, and that includes solid organic phosphates.

 

[roland jacques]

DannyBradley;79281 wrote: This is an old debate. Here's my take on it.

Roland is on the right path with aerobic bacteria. Bio balls are just surface area intended to provide a place for the bacteria to grow. The reason we trickle water over them is so that they're exposed to air. Air on average has 20,000x more oxygen than water..

agreed

DannyBradley;79281 wrote:
Now, when you remove the bio balls you reduce the amount of surface area in your sump for the bacteria to live on. This slows down nitrification. This will in turn give you less ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate production, leaving the proteins in the water longer, allowing the skimmer to pull them out before it is reduced to nitrate. The bacteria may just colonize the live rock in the tank more heavily in that case..

Even without a skimmer, removing bio balls completely, reduces nitrates.

DannyBradley;79281 wrote: It is HIGHLY debatable that this method actually yields better results. I think people are just lazy and don't want to clean a prefilter, so they remove it. Then they don't want to clean their bio balls, so they remove those. As for live rock? Who cleans live rock? I think you see my point..

Do you have or have seen any wet dry tanks with bio balls that don't have any nitrates? (without algae refuges..)

I would not replace bio balls with live ruble rock. it would act much like the Bio balls and defeat the purpose .

 

[dakota9]

I have been cleaning my balls ever since I can remember. But every three days! I only clean every month or so.:blush:


Oh Dude!!!!!! I'm at a loss for words!

 

[seedless reefer]

Good clean balls are the only way to go. You don't want your balls to get stale and musty smelling.

Dakota it is nice to hear that you are so good at cleaning your balls.

 

[dakota9]

I gave my big sack of balls to flyingarmy........


Wow, that's even worse

 

[linda lee]

Dakota9;79369 wrote: I gave my big sack of balls to flyingarmy........


Wow, that's even worse

geeez... see what happens when I take just ONE night off??

You boys are incorrigible

 

[seedless reefer]

MARK!

God man give Dakota his balls back.

You don't take another mans balls ever. Even though most people say using balls is outdated, some people still find them useful.

Hell I know I do.

Especially in the morning before my first cup of coffee.

 

[dannybradley]

Roland Jacques;79313 wrote: Do you have or have seen any wet dry tanks with bio balls that don't have any nitrates? (without algae refuges..)

That's not the arguement here. The bacteria that produces nitrate lives on all surfaces in the tank. Bioballs do not remove it. Comparing bioballs to refugiums is not a like comparison.

Refugiums will remove nitrate whereas bioballs do not. I was stating that removing bioballs slows down the process, leaving the waste in a different form. It doesn't just vanish with the bioballs. I think that we can both agree that a combination of methods would work better than one or the other, without getting into the intricacies of how the tank is actually set up.

 

[roland jacques]

Danny, I am not comparing other filters. I was just trying to isolate the argument to just bio balls in a wet dry type filter. Thats why I said WITHOUT other forms of nitrate reducing "filters..." except Live rock.

I think this is a very good discussion. I was not aware that anyone would support the use of bio balls. I am glad to have this opportunity to find out the whys. I am trying to understand the pros of bio balls, because some LFS of stores ... still push this method with reef tanks.

No doubt removing bio balls slows down nitrification, However I Don't agree that both or any combo of the use of bio balls as a nitrification filter in a reef tank is good. Clean or dirty balls there is no way around the fact that end results of wet & dry filter with bio balls in it produces nitrates.

I do Know that when Ive removed Bio balls from many reef tanks Nitrates have gone down. My question is has anybody experienced anything other than nitrates going down when removing Bio balls?

 

[suasati]

Cleaning bioballs does nothing but giving you a brief spike in Ammonia and Nitrite and eventually becoming counter productive.. The basic difference between bioballs and Liverock(not rubble) is that, liverock is porous which means it can house anaerobic bacteria(nitrate reducers) inside certain depth for which you need to have atleast baseball size rocks.... or you can always use zeolites.
Using bioballs encourages more nitrification bacteria on the bio-balls than the live rocks so the nitrate concentration inside the liverocks is not higher than the tank water, which ino is counter productive in reducing nitrates, that's why bioballs are a negative influence on the overall quality of water in saltwater aquariums....

 

[tnyga]

<span style="font-family: Arial;">I so wanna say something (biting tongue)</span>
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Either way...thanks for the post...I learned something (really)</span>
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial;">And it had nothing to do with Dakota not having balls..</span>
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span>

 

[dannybradley]

SuAsati;79461 wrote: or you can always use zeolites.

Are you suggesting zeolite for its porosity or for it's ability to remove ammonia? Zeolite cannot remove ammonia from saltwater. Zeolite exhanges an ion of salt for an ion on ammonia. It saltwater it just retains its salt.

Roland-
Removing the bioballs just causes the bacteria to grow elsewhere. Bioballs just provide an excellent home for the bacteria. The waste in the water is still present, just in a different form, so do a different test. You're exchanging nitrate for unrefined fish waste, ammonia, nitrite, and different forms of phosphates.