Macro Vs Bio Balls

[Mr fox]

im stuck trying to decide to fill the refugium with bio balls or should i do sand and macro let me know what you think i will need a light for the macro but is it worth it if i can get same results using balls instead?

 

[barebottomcouple]

well I have run bio balls for years and macro sand and rock. I removed my bio balls about 2 weeks ago and no ill affects yet. my refugium is 180 gallon with about 100 lbs rock 6 inches crushed coral bed and about 4 different macros. other than a skimmer and a little floss in overflow no other filteration, and 0 nitrates and ammonia and phosphate. no hair algae either. I love macro in refugium it gives off phytoplankton and home and food for huge numbers of pods and creatures.

 

[J_T]

well I have run bio balls for years and macro sand and rock. I removed my bio balls about 2 weeks ago and no ill affects yet. my refugium is 180 gallon with about 100 lbs rock 6 inches crushed coral bed and about 4 different macros. other than a skimmer and a little floss in overflow no other filteration, and 0 nitrates and ammonia and phosphate. no hair algae either. I love macro in refugium it gives off phytoplankton and home and food for huge numbers of pods and creatures.

You are an exception!

IMO, neither! Fill it with rock.

Unless you have 180 gallons.... Macro isn't going to do nearly as much as you could with a reactor, and some GFO. However, live rock! It will filter water, it will provide lots of surface area for bacteria, and the critters love it. Best use of the average Fuge.

 

[scubasteve]

my overflow goes through a trickle with bio balls then passes baffles to skimmer then passes through fuge area with deep sandbed some lr rubble and tons of spaghetti and grape chaeto along with caulerpa..... only thing i ever run in my reactor is carbon oh and wc every 3 weeks so my small 5 gallon pail worth of macro is doing something and water was pristine till the leak and changover imo most media for reactors costs too much and does too little

 

[pulpfiction1]

bio balls like live rock will grow bacteria that will deal with ammonia and nitrites but will produce nitrates
and eventually will become a nitrate factory,on the other hand,algae will consume nitrates as will live rock eventually,
my personal view on bio balls would be if your short on live rock (i use 1.5 lbs per gallon) bio balls will help grow enough
bacteria to sustain a heavy bio load in your system

 

[scubasteve]

Was after i added the deep sandbed to my fuge and tank and adding an algae scrubber on the other setup (im still trying to figure out where to fit it in a smaller sump right now) that i could do wc every 3 weeks. But do agree pulp bio balls will get some crazy spikes if you left them too long without rinsing. we all have ditched them for our reasons mostly natural is most efficient im sure you would be more than happy with a deep sandbed some lr rubble on top the sand and as much chaeto as you can stuff in there and check out about an algae scrubber for the future

 

[pulpfiction1]

deep sand bed has always been good to me

 

[barebottomcouple]

my overflow goes through a trickle with bio balls then passes baffles to skimmer then passes through fuge area with deep sandbed some lr rubble and tons of spaghetti and grape chaeto along with caulerpa..... only thing i ever run in my reactor is carbon oh and wc every 3 weeks so my small 5 gallon pail worth of macro is doing something and water was pristine till the leak and changover imo most media for reactors costs too much and does too little

totally agree only difference I don't have trickle or bio balls I feel reactors just add more cost and more pumps to add costs and heat.like steve says pristine water and low costs speak for themselves

 

[scubasteve]

totally agree only difference I don't have trickle or bio balls I feel reactors just add more cost and more pumps to add costs and heat.like steve says pristine water and low costs speak for themselves

lol my trickle is a cheapo diy i drilled some holes in the bottom of a tupperware container filled it 3/4 full of bio balls set my floss on top and hold it on with an elastic band so it has a bit of a water pocket.... i went from using 2 square feet of floss to a 8x8 peice and with that much savings i can almost change it daily for the same cost as once a week before and i find not being submerged allows it to trap even more crud than before so was a double win with my scenario

 

[Mr fox]

Thanks to everyone for the advice still undecided

 

[saltyair]

No offense to the bio-ball users but long term they end up doing more harm than good, they get filled with ditrus and most of the time you can't create enough flow.

Refuge on a new tank can be very helpful to establish an effective ecosystem and help balance ph, po4 and no3. As the system matures the refuge becomes ineffective for nutrient export.

Most effective and long term success is put rock in your sump - add a bio-pellet reactor

 

[barebottomcouple]

No offense to the bio-ball users but long term they end up doing more harm than good, they get filled with ditrus and most of the time you can't create enough flow.

Refuge on a new tank can be very helpful to establish an effective ecosystem and help balance ph. po4 and no3. As the system matures the refuge becomes ineffective for nutrient export.

Most effective and long term success is put rock in your sump - add a bio-pellet reactor

not to be a dick but where do you get your info from? I've always run a fug. this one now is 5 years old and not only exports nutrients and nitrates to undetectable. also incredible source of food for mandarins as in copepods and anthropods (literally millions in my cheato) Also the macro sloths off phytoplankton for my corals...I have never fed my corals or clams other than phytoplankton
Bio balls of some sort or other have been around since the late 70's..if flow pattern and rinsing every 6 months they cant be bet if you have a small fug. or sump. I have run bio balls in a wet dry trickle and also fully submerged I had better luck with submerged but either system has its merits. Also easier to rinse bio balls every 6 months or so than to add another system running adding heat and another cost to an already high cost hobby.

 

[saltyair]

not to be a dick but where do you get your info from? I've always run a fug. this one now is 5 years old and not only exports nutrients and nitrates to undetectable. also incredible source of food for mandarins as in copepods and anthropods (literally millions in my cheato) Also the macro sloths off phytoplankton for my corals...I have never fed my corals or clams other than phytoplankton
Bio balls of some sort or other have been around since the late 70's..if flow pattern and rinsing every 6 months they cant be bet if you have a small fug. or sump. I have run bio balls in a wet dry trickle and also fully submerged I had better luck with submerged but either system has its merits. Also easier to rinse bio balls every 6 months or so than to add another system running adding heat and another cost to an already high cost hobby.

all in good nature.
I should have a clarification on the refug. Depending on the size of the tank and bio-load.
I have experienced the refug on my 180 and from reading the book aquarium corals by eric borneman. I also read an article by advanced aquarist , basically saying that a refug becomes a sump pit that becomes couter productive over time - also the amount of macro and total water volume would need to increase as the bio load increased. I did experience this for a time the refug helped stability but slowly started to become couter productive (cyano, increased no3 and po4) I also have a strong pod population my sump still has rock in it and is a pod refug.
Bio balls by cleaning them you kill off the bacteria - by not cleaning them you will kill the bacteria, unless you have extremely high flow through them.
You can run a tank a 100 ways and it can work sometimes better than others. I didn't mean to offend anyone, I stated what I have learned and experienced.
If you read up on most of the successful aquariums or featured aquariums almost all of them run bio-pellets.

 

[yveterinarian]

In my reef system I have rock only and a protein skimmer, no reactors. For my seahorse fry system I needed something I could easily take down and sterilize so I chose bioballs and filter floss. I have no rock in the fry system. The system has now been running for a year with the bioballs submurged and the floss on top and I have had no troubles with the system. I do not check my water parameters regularly but I judge the effectiveness of the system by the health of my animals and they are definitely healthy. I have way too many seahorses on that system than is recommended and they are doing great. I regularly vacuum the detritus so very little of it builds up. I do know that I have to rinse my bioballs but so far have not done so. I am currently setting up a large bucket with bioballs and will be cycling them properly so that I can then trade out the ones in the system for the new ones and can properly clean and sterilize the old ones. I intend to always have some cycling ready. From what I have been told by fellow seahorse keepers rinsing the bioballs with fresh saltwater does not kill the bacteria but will help to keep your system clean and reduce the nitrates considerably. You will, however kill the bacteria if you rinse with fresh water.
Another product to consider that has been doing very well for people I know and is becoming available in Canada is Kaldness K1. It has a much better surface area than bioballs and is used in many fish aquaculture places. I recently spoke with the owners of Living Aquarium in Cambridge who have begun using it and they love it. I had been considering switching to them at some point for the last couple of years and may still later when I can afford it.

 

[barebottomcouple]

first I didn't say wash balls I said rinse them you rinse them with water from a water change no scrubbing just a rinse. second you have to harves macro otherwise the die off will produce no3 and po I have 3 years of marine biology at the university of florida and 15 years in reefing .... I have seen thousands of systems with fuges and running for years even decades with nothing but a fug. a buddy of mine has a mud fuge and no skimmer and its been pristine for over 11 years. I change my floss once every 2 weeks and don't touch my fug. otherwise.in my experience anything we add natural like rock sand macro ect. is going to help our systems thrive.
not saying you are wrong everyone works with what works for them, just saying there are other tried and true methods.
I also have books ... and it shows world class systems from around the world that run macro fuges some even skimmerless.

 

[Reef Hero]

I just posted a link to the latest R2R reef magazine where a reef chemist and fellow hobbyist explains pretty much everything there is to know about nitrates..... Including how to control them.
Running GFO will do pretty much nothing to control nitrates.... And running most methods to control nitrates will do very little or nothing to control po4..... This is a misconception I see presented on the forum time and time again.

Oh and I want to mention too that the whole theory of needing liverock or the old 1lb per gallon theory is completely unnecessary in today's modern reef keeping. Many people having success nowadays keeping nitrates under control without a single ounce of liverock or dry rock in their system.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[pulpfiction1]

personally i would like to see a well stocked tank with no live rock and no nitrates without massive frequent water changes

 

[jeffopentax]

Many people having success nowadays keeping nitrates under control without a single ounce of liverock or dry rock in their system.

Wouldn't a tank without rock, live or dry, be a little flat and uninteresting?

 

[pulpfiction1]

well i suppose if you just use a deep sand bed and waited an awfully long time you would have a tank with sand and no rock
and have some bacterial nitrification happening,entertaining?maybe not so much

 

[saltyair]

Like I said many ways to run a system - it really comes down to what kind of environment / system you want in the end. A seahorse tank, fowlr, sps, softy or mixed reef will all handle nutrients levels differently. In most cases (from reading and studies) most mixed reef,sps reefers and lps grow out of bio-balls for various reasons. I personally would not suggest bio-balls for someone starting up (as the OP asked)
I also gave reasons what happens to fuges over time and the science behind it (also personal experience)

"Cons to biological filtration are rarely mentioned. The first downside is that biological filtration never removes nutrients from the aquarium. Therefore as long as you are feeding your fish and your corals you will be increasing the nutrient load of the aquarium. This can be related to the golden rule of gardening “put in what you take out, take out what you put in”. If you are not harvesting your aquarium you are accumulating matter in the system."

The benefit behind rock in a sump with bio-pellets is stability and long term success.

My system has gone through an evolution (like most) some good some bad. I had a fairly large refug (35 gal) and it did help me stabilize my system, unfortunately with increased bio-load and maturity it did become an issue. That being said in the future I plan on setting up a display refuge and plumbing it into my total water volume , i will have to lower the the amount of bio-pellets tho.

Great discussion