To Bio Ball or Not to Bio Ball

[sgt__york]

I thought this warranted a new thread, instead of continuing it hidden at the bottom of the Lighting Question.
Debate is often a lost art. A good debate or discussion should be an exchange of ideas, often opposted to each other, with the PURPOSE of discovery and truth - NOT to simply be the 'winner.' At times, we agree to disagree. I am fairly new here - so not quite sure why it was proposed that a discussion of bio-balls would create an outbreak of debate - but perhaps it is one i'd enjoy reading - and learning from.
As I read the posts earlier - bio balls are for the purpose of completeing the nitrogen cycle. The help grow media that removes amonia and nitrite by converting it to nitrate. The "DOWN" side to them is they cannot break nitrates down. GIVEN.
So Live Rock is entered into the equasion. I would think, the live rock would have to be cultured and well stocked before abandoning the bio-balls.
For ex: My tank has only been setup for about 1wk now (75 gal). I have 4.5 gal of bio balls in a wet/dry system; 40 lbs of "BASE" rock (that has been fresh water dipped; bleached; sun dried and cleaned) - absolutely void of life. For purposes of cycling and seeding, I have 20lbs of Fiji LIVE rock introduces on tier 2. My plans, once the cycle is compelte, is to then add more Live rock (better choiced pieces) for the rest of tier 2 and the very top - that will get the most light.
NOW, theoretically once all this live rock is cycled, cured, and well established. I could remove the bio-balls and let them carry the bio-load.
Question is "WHY" do it tho? The live rock perform their duties, and help reduce nitrates. The bioballs may not, but they DO help keep the ammonia/nitrites down. Why reduce a backup to the Live Rock?
As a seperate subject perhaps - i have a question regarding SUBSTRATES. I had live sand in my prior tank - about the time I had the sino outbreak - and it was the biggest pain in the butt to clean. I guess i shouldn't blame itall on the sand, but I did. I have put small shells (not sure that this is crushed coral or not) - told by the LFS that they help with buffering the tank, and let particles fall down in them better to decay and dissolve.
Does the aspect of one way over another have anything to do with the OBJECTIVE of running the aquarium as PURE an ecosystem (and as NATURAL) as possible verses simply achieving the desired appearance and sucess of healthy corals and fish? For example, is it better to use turbos to clean your glass (natural) or use a sponge and/or razor and do it yourself each day? I'm not sure if this questino plays any part or not - just wondered.
Won't nitrates rise regardless of whether the hosts live on bioballs or live rock? Do bio-balls stop the ability of any de-nitrating media from doing their job? Does the presents of bio-balls create LESS of a likelihood for such media to grow on Live rock? And if so, does that impede the ability of Live Rock to perform a more beneficial or denitrating function??
In addition, if you get bad lighting and have green alage or sino take over your live rock... Does this present a greater danger to the media that is handling the ammonia load as opposed to having the media in a remote location on bio balls that are not as likely to get sino and green algae (also because they are not in as much lighting/ if any).
If you DO remove the bio-balls and let the Live Rock perform their duties - does this make it a berlin method? Also, does the fact that the media is always sumerged and exposed to MUCH LESS ppm (parts per million) of oxygen, create a less desirable situtation?
I'm sorry to have so many questions - but this is NOT an area I can claim much in the way of experience or knowledge on. But that is why I posted them here, and hope the more knowledgeable hobbyiest may have insights. One of the wonderful things about this mssg board is the ability to learn, and gleam info off of others experience and research.
I eagerly look forward to the discussion that follows.

 

[rhomer]

I'll take the first stab at this.
First, bio-balls will do exactly what you say, they complete two of the three parts of the cycle. They do not finish the cycle by breaking down nitrates to nitrogen gas. There are only a few ways to complete that cycle. You can setup a plenum under a thick substrate this will create an anerobic area that bacteria break down nitrates to nitrogen gas. You can create a deep sand bed that does a similar thing as a plenum. Or you can have some sort of macro algea or mangrove plant that will consume the excess nutrients and complete the cycle similar to putting fertilizer on a plant.
Most people here are going to tell you that you should use something other than CC for your substrate, and I will totally agree. You will already have enough to maintain, the pain of cleaning the substrate is messy, and will keep a elevated level of nitrates.
You asked about the berlin method. The berlin method is having a deep sand bed 4-6 inches about 1-2 lbs of rock for every gallon of water, a skimmer, and some water movement powerheads
You could also have a Jeau-bert setup. This is a plenum, sand over that, 1 - 2 lbs of rock for every gallon of water and some power heads.
These two setups require the least amount of equipment, and both are easy to maintain and setup.
I had a Jeau-bert setup for 3 years and had marginal success with it. Mostly due to my own stupidity, but this was before I had access to this much info.
I currently have a wet/dry and have 85 lbs of rock in a 55 gallon.

 

[rhomer]

Sorry for the second post, but my machine locked up. I also have about 5 inch sand bed. I have had this setup now for about 4 months, and my Nitrates don't move 20 all the time. From my understanding the dsb will take time to do its job.
If I don't see Nitrates drop by this winter, I will build a refugium, and add macro algea or a mangrove tree to consume the remaining Nitrates.
HTH
Rob

 

[broomer5]

I'll toss in my opinion here as well.
To me, the whole concept of biofiltration as it relates to the nitrogen cycle comes down to a few simple questions I ask myself.
1)
For converting ammonia to nitrite, and then nitrite to nitrate;
"where do I want aerobic bacteria to grow in the greatest concentrations?"
2)
For converting nitrate to nitrogen gas;
"where do I want anaerobic bacteria to grow in the greatest concentrations?"
3)
"what are the factors that allow these bacteria to flourish or limit their growth?"
If we had a tank of saltwater, no substrate, no live rock, no filtration ... nothing but saltwater, a powerhead and one fish - the only surface area for aerobic bacteria to grow would be the glass walls/bottom of the tank and the powerhead.
Not much of a filtration system, and this tank would not support much of a bioload.
Place more fish in this tank - and they will most likely die from ammonia/nitrite toxicity.
So if you want to stock more fish, first one must increase the population of aerobic bacteria - by increasing the surface area for them to grow, and making sure they are exposed to sufficient oxygen concentrations.
How you do this is your choice.
Add an external powerfilter with biomedia.
Add a wet/dry with bioballs.
Add a canister filter.
Adding substrate.
Adding live rock.
Increasing water circulation.
Doing any or all of the above in various combinations will allow more surface area for these bacteria to grow - and increasing water circulation will allow oxygen rich water to reach them.
The other factor that contributes to the population of aerobic bacteria growth is the amount of ammonia present for them to consume.
Striking a balance between bioload and biofiltraion capacity is the key IMO.
A tank with ANY biofiltration system in place, will only be efficient in the first two stages of the nitrogen cycle IF there is ammonia present to a degree that will sustain and allow the aerobic bacteria to grow in the first place.
A tank with a 4-6 inche DSB and tons of live rock will not yield much bacteria populations IF there is no producers of ammonia. No fuel for them to live and reproduce - and their numbers will be limited.
Increasing the ammonia producers ( fish ) will lead to an increase in aerobic bacteria numbers.
Once the balance is reached - you have an effective biological filter for this number of animals. You allow ammonia to be converted to nitrite, and nitrite on to nitrate.
Exceed this number of animals - and you will need to allow the bacteria population to respond accordingly - grow and reproduce to a larger population that can handle this increase in ammonia/nitrite production.
Exceed this number of animals to a point where your system can not handle the ammonia/nitrite load - and you will lose fish.
Any filtration system that allows aerobic bacteria to grow to a ratio appropriate for the fish load will work fine, assuming these bacteria have enough oxygen to do their thing.
As always though, the end result is NITRATE
To rid the tank of excess nitrate - you either chose to do water changes, add a refugium with macro algae, add a DSB, add a coil denitrifyer or add live rock.
Many chose to use a combination of the above.
The easiest and most natural method seems to be to allow areas for the anaerobic bacteria to live - deep within the pores of the live rock and down deep in the living sandbed.
Restricting the amount of oxygen available to these bacteria will allow them to reduce the nitrate to nitrogen gas - thus finally completing the nitrogen cycle.
Other types of biofiltration methods just don't allow for these low oxygen areas to exist, the anerobic bacteria have no place to grow and reproduce and thus these types of filters are unable to complete the nitrogen cycle.
Wet/dry bioballs and biowheels are great at the first two stages of the nitrogen cycle - but allow little if any anerobic bacteria populations to exist - and thus are incomplete biofilters.
DSB's and live rock on the other hand, allow for all three stages in the nitrogen cycle to occur - for they allow both aerobic and anaerobic bacteria a place to do their thing. They are considered more of a "complete" biofilter - cause the allow the nitrogen cycle to to actually complete it's natural route.
Where you choose to allow aerobic bacteria to live, grow in numbers sufficient to handle your fish load is your decision.
Allowing these bacteria to reach a balanced number in relation to your fish load is the key to the first two stages of the nitrogen cycle.
You will naturally end up with nitrate production.
How you handle this nitrate is again your choice.
You either manually remove/reduce it with water changes ....
Or you put into place large surface areas of low oxygen for the anaerobic bacteria to reduce the nitrate to nitrogen gas .... and let the tank complete the nitrogen cycle.
It's as simple as that ...
Having too much surface area for bacteria to grow in RELATION to the number of ammonia producers does little or nothing to improve the biofilter in my opinion.
A 300 gallon tank with a 6 inch DSB 400 lbs of live rock - that only houses one 1/2" damselfish - will certainly handle the bioload - but I believe the limited ammonia production will somewhat limit the population of bacteria that COULD grow in such a tank setup.
Aerobic bacteria need fuel - ammonia & oxygen.
Without either one in sufficient quantities - their total numbers will likewise be limited.
Having a working DSB, a lot of live rock AND a wet/dry with bioballs seems to me to fall under the catagory of too much surface area for most properly stocked tanks.
I do not see an advantage of having too much surface area as a ratio to the number of fish you keep, although I'm sure others may disagree.

 

[rhomer]

broomer5 what was your point at the end?

 

[broomer5]

rhomer
I guess that is confusing - even to me as I re-read it. I'll try better this time to explain.
I suppose my point was just that I don't see a need to keep bioballs or any other biomedia in place - if you have a DSB, live rock or a combination of the two - and your ammonia/nitrite levels are zero.
More surface area than is required to me seems unnecessary, if indeed your sandbed and rock biofilter is doing the job for the load in the tank.
That's all ...

 

[rhomer]

I guessed that is what you were saying, but there is a big question about what you have said. How do you know that you have too much? My point is, you can only tell that you don't have enough ex. when you add your next fish, and the ammonia goes up and never comes down.
I think that you always want more filtration than what your current load is. In essance that is what is preached over and over again on this site. Moderation on your fish load! By saying that you want more filtration (surface area for aerobic bacteria) than waste that can be disposed of.

 

[joerdie]

maby im missing something in this thread, and i dont mean to burn anyone but it seem everyone is dancing around the main issue here. There is no question that wet/dry with bio balls=0 nitrite amonia, ect.. but the trAtes are still present. add a dsb, refugium, skimmer, water changes, or whatever else you want but thats the winning formula. i myself am in the process of upgrading from a 55g to a 150g and am changing the way i do a lot of things. I know more now than i did then and am planning ahead. (my target date at the beginning was 12mo. and i think it will be running by dec.) Basicly it will go as follows. 800gph through the wet dry then, 50% to my skimmer and back into the sump. this is followed by a mag950 witch will tee off into the main tank and to a gravity driven refugium. I DO NOT PLAN ON HAVING A NITRATE PROBLEM!!!!

 

[rhomer]

joerdie,
one suggestion, you might want to put the skimmer before the bio balls, this will reduce excess nutrients building up on the balls.
Just a suggestion,
Rob

 

[mrmaroon]

So my question is does it hurt to have the bio balls(2 gallons), the LR, a DSB, and a skimmer all together? That is what I am trying and it seems to be fine?

 

[rhomer]

Yeah that will work, broomer5's point is that it's not needed, but this won't give you a problem.

 

[joerdie]

rhomer- i acually wanted to hook it up that way but i dont think it is possible.. the reason is that my tank is not predrilled and after the water goes into the overflow boxes it falls strait into the sump.. if there was a skimmer before i wouldnt get the propper water distrabution into the bio chamber causing dead spots. any ideas?

 

[sgt__york]

I think I understand the points being made so far.. but i'm wondering.. since when is "too much" area for media been seen as a bad thing?
If it doesn't get used (in the form of bio-balls) it doesn't produce die-off and thus toxic waste. It simply doesn't get used. Isn't that why, when we only need 5x of total tank turnover - we all do 7x? and 10x? and 12x? Because excess of things that are NOT deterimental are considered good backups? We all put in 'more' live rock than needed at times, MORE light, more water flow - so why not MORE surface area for biomedia "IF" it should be needed?
Also I havn't seen anyone address the problems (if there are any) of Using Live Rock as the pure form host of media - in the event of any problems inside the tank? For example - when you get a hair algae outbreak or sino outbreak - how does this affect the good media? Doesn't it restrict their already lower oxygen ppm? Because the live rock is more subject to light, doesn't it put it at risk 'more' than a wet/dry bio-ball system? I don't know - i'm just asking to see thoughts here - because we all know "perfect" water conditions dont STAY perfect. A dead anemone, overused bulbs, phosphates, etc can throw wrenches into these plans. In addition, since live rock when introduced is LIVE - doesn't the "VAST" area of rock "NOT" subjected to light do a long slow die-off phase that can be a continuous ammonia load as well?
Side Note: Does rock have to be LIVE to be a host for such bio media? bio-balls are not live. Thus if i have 40lbs of BASE rock - can they not host the same media?
A question - when people say they have a wet/dry - does that automaitcally mean bio-balls are being used?
Also, what does DSB stand for? Realize this is a rookie question here.. have figured out most of the accrnyms... LFS (Local fish store) etc.. but what is DSB?? ? substrate base??
back on track to bio-balls again... correct me if i'm wrong.. but in doing a little reading..what i've seen is the "KEY" to deciding to go Berlin (no bio balls) vs bio-balls is FISH LOAD! How many fish will you have in the sytem.
A pure reef tank with 1-2 fish bio balls are not needed. However if you want more fish (even w/live rock) - bio balls are a better choice, because they have a much higher surface area, oxygen levels, and take lower volum to handle the ammonia load.
Does this sound accurate? My LFS (independantly asked) says the same thing. The first thing they ask me is do you want fish in the tank?
So then it becomes a question of how to handle the NITRATES. Nitrate control for the purpose of fewer water changes, but mostly for the well being of corals. I'm told the MORE fish you have, the LESS delicate corals you should consider.
I understand you can never have enough protein skimmers to this regard. So then it becomes use Live Sand, Refugiums, etc to help handle the Nitrate levels - but in all of this - it sounds like - if you have more than 2 fish - why not add wet/dry bio balls to the live rock system.

 

[broomer5]

Here's something I've thought about recently, and would like for anyone to comment or correct my thinking.
I'm assuming that the key to ammonia conversion is the "number" of bacteria - not the amount of surface area in a biofiltration system.
Granted - more surface area means more "potential" bacteria - but does not automatically mean "more" bacteria.
I'm thinking that the bacteria growth and reproduction are limited by the same things most all living things are limited by - namely food, water and oxygen.
Ammonia is the food or fuel that allows these beneficial bacteria reproduce, multiply and consume the ammonia as food - thus converting it to nitrite.
Having a huge amount of surface area with little if any bacteria colonies living on this huge surface area does not mean you have an efficient biofilter - all it mean is that you have a lot of surface area.
This is why we must "cycle" a new tank - no matter how large it is - no matter how much biomedia it contains - no matter how much surface area it contains for bacteria to "eventually" colonize.
Suppose you have two tanks.
One is a 15 gallon tank 24"x12"x12"
One is a 150 gallon tank 72"x18"x28"
Now add a 6 inch DSB to both tanks - hypothetically with the exact same number of sand grains, each having the same grain size.
The 15 gallon tank would have somewhere around 1728 cubic inches of sandbed.
The 150 gallon tank would have somewhere around 7776 cubic inches of sandbed.
Now place one lonely damsel fish in each tank and let it cycle, again hyothetically assuming the two fish are fed the exact amount of food and excrete the same amount of waste.
You monitor the ammonia/nitrite/nitrate and follow the cycle of both tanks.
Both tanks eventually read zero ammonia.
Now - which tank has the largest population of living bacteria in the sandbed ?
I'm guessing the actual number of bacteria present in each tank will be somewhat the same, because the amount of ammonia fuel would be somewhat the same in both tanks. Even though there is a lot more surface area in the 150 gallon tank's sandbed - does this mean there will be more bacteria ?
If the bacteria reproduce in response to additional ammonia - and are limited by the amount of ammonia available - which tank would have more of these bacteria present ?
In these 2 hypothetical tanks, I would guess that the bacteria concentration would be greater in the smaller tank vs the larger tank.
More individual bacteria per cubic inch of sand in the 15 gallon, than in the larger 150 tank.
But I'm not sure. Like I said - I'm only thinking out loud here.
I guess my question - one that I thought I knew the answer for is this.
Is the total number of bacteria in a tank's biofilter ( sandbed ) limited by the amount of ammonia available to them to consume, grow and reproduce ?

 

[sgt__york]

I can't speak with authority here, but I would presume YES - a very similar amount of bacteria. Because they are going to grow to the amount of fuel being given. The primary difference is the room for EXPANSION in the 2.
1 person living in a 800 sq ft house, compared to a 3000 sq ft house: You will eat and dwell in the same amount of area - but you can sure have one helluva bigger party in the larger home.
NOW, what i'm wondering is... 2 tanks.. same size... let's say each 150 gal eachwith 1 lonely damsel. One uses the live sand (or live rock) the OTHER wet/dry bio media
Which will have more bacteria? and/or which will utilize more of it's available surface area? As i understand it the wet/dry bio media has a "MUCH MUCH" higher ppm of oxygem (which is also a key to the media growth - not just surface area). THUS, it takes much more AREA of the sand to accomidate the damsel than it would in the bio media.
I could be wrong, but this is how it has been explained to me and is my current understanding. Hope i'm corrected if wrong.

 

[rhomer]

I think most people see the point I was bringing up earlier. Broomer5 is correct about the actual amount of bacteria, but we all know that the 15 is limited to just a few fish, mainly because there is only a limited amount of bacteria that can survive, due to the limited surface area the bacteria can live on. So, why not over do your filtration. This allows for easier expansion later on. You have less concern about adding that last fish.