Bio Balls?

[aquabee]

As far as nitrate nightmares are concerned, remember that plants are nitrogen sinks. I always keep a plant or two in every tank, even if I have to hide them. It's always been worth it; since I started doing that, I haven't seen nitrate spikes in my tanks and I chalk it up to the presence of plants.

[rage]

Bio balls

Like everyone said, anything in the sump can trap detritus which turns into nitrate so you need to clean the bio-balls out once in a while. Depends on how it looks, you might not need to do that but once every 2, 3 months. Just remember, just like any other filter media, the beneficial bacterias live in them too, so be mindful and not kill them off when you clean the bio-balls. You either clean half out at a time or use tank water instead of tap which has ammonia.

[ScorpiosWife]

Thanks, again. I forgot that when we put 100% new water in it to start the tank, I put one of the filters from the old Oscar tank into the sump to get some familiar bacteria going. 3 weeks later I'm wondering why in the hell my sump is filthy, DOH! Needless to say, we cleaned the sump out last weekend. I also lightly rinsed the bioballs in the sump, but not in the overflow area in the tank. Still not sure exactly what that's called. Next weekend I'll test the parameters again and clean out that area. Since my O's are so damn messy I've got a calendar entry to clean the sump & bio balls again in July.

Not sure if it makes a diffrence or not (right, wrong or indifferent) but hubby wanted a charcoal filter in the sump on top of the bio balls. We got him a thing of charcoal and I got some old panty hose from a neighbor and let him have his way with it, lol. Just not sure if it's necessary? What's yall's input?

[eklikewhoa]

carbon exhaust too fast in a messy tank so it's almost not worthwhile unless you have an issue you are trying to remedy with it so if there's nothing needing to be removed like chemicals then I wouldn't bother. Plus carbon tends to release back into the water once it becomes saturated.

[CRUSHER]

you can always have your hubby kiss your balls for luck and see how that goes....

[ScorpiosWife]

On that note, I should throw in that we bowl and our team name is Deez Nuts. Therefore, balls are familiar comedy material.

[CRUSHER]

lol

[SunnyHouTX]

On that note, I should throw in that we bowl and our team name is Deez Nuts. Therefore, balls are familiar comedy material.

Nice!

[alexrex20]

no bio balls here. they're nitrate bombs in SW tanks

[ScorpiosWife]

"Balls", said the Queen, "if I had them I'd be King"!

Just for fun, here's 15 of the balls we know how to use.



And there's another 3 ball bag behind those.

With bio-balls we're clueless, bowling balls are another story!

[eklikewhoa]

You've got an impressive set of balls.... )

[ScorpiosWife]

Why, thank you for complimenting our balls. The bio balls picture is much less impressive & what I mean by that is that there is no picture, lol.

[Totenkampf]

is there an AC/DC song playing right now?

[ScorpiosWife]

Damn skippy, lol.

[Totenkampf]

i know on topic is boring, but im not a fan of bio balls. you might look into poret foam as an alternative? i am ordering some myself to try for canister filter foam and for Hamburg Matten Filter setups. You could use mutiple layers of the stuff so that you could alternate cleaning them so that the bioactivity stays high. they would have many times the amount of surface area over balls, even big balls.