Biological filter media..Whats the best out there?...

Supposedly two glass minerals that have about the same immense internal surface area as carbon are Vermiculite, that weird potting soil that looks like tiny wood cubes you'd see in ornamental planters, and Perlite another weird white potting soil that resembles Styrofoam. Both minerals are supposed to be in the family of volcanic glass and excellent filter media you can buy in bulk but I haven't tried it yet and trying to get more experienced information on their safe use.
 
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CWO4GUNNER said:
Supposedly two glass minerals that have about the same immense internal surface area as carbon are Vermiculite, that weird potting soil that looks like tiny wood cubes you'd see in ornamental planters, and Perlite another weird white potting soil that resembles Styrofoam. Both minerals are supposed to be in the family of volcanic glass and excellent filter media you can buy in bulk but I haven't tried it yet and trying to get more experienced information on their safe use.
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yea the stuff is dirt cheap in bulk... I thought it would make good bio filter media, but no idea if it will be safe underwater. I use it in my garden...
 
RDTigger said:
yea the stuff is dirt cheap in bulk... I thought it would make good bio filter media, but no idea if it will be safe underwater. I use it in my garden...
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The hard part is finding it in pure form with no additives but also in the right grain size coarse. They make it now for pool and hot tube filters with no additives 100% pure, the problem is its in super fine grain for mud type filters. I'm am in the process of contacting a couple companies that say they sell course grain pure for hydroponic gardening and carnivorous plants which cannot take any additives. I think soon Ill have the right stuff but no way Ill run it on one of my main aquariums cold turkey, Ill have to run a control test first for 48 hours in the QT tank.
 
SubRosa said:
Personally the thought of using submerged media for biological filtration doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Give me a wet/dry with bioballs or if I'm running a canister a set of Marineland BioWheels. Biological filtration as it is being discussed here is series of oxidative chemical reactions. Submerged media are limited to the oxygen dissolved in the water. Whatever media you use the more oxygen it can get the better.
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That's interesting. I'd love to know if there've been any scientific, or at least accurate and objective, tests of bio media submerged or wet/dry for comparison. It makes sense to me that given the same useful surface area, media in a wet/dry filter would process more ammonia into nitrate but we don't know the maximum capacity of the bacteria within a given surface area to do this processing. Can it approach that maximum capacity submerged in well oxygenated water? If it can already, is there room to improve wet/dry? How much more oxygen is available in a wet/dry scenario or can that be measured?

This is not to argue; I'm pretty sure the wet/dry approach is more efficient in terms of (surface area / nitrification capacity). Just, I'd love to see more publications like Diana Walstad's lovely book "Ecology of the Planted Tank" to learn more. I would love to do it myself, but I can only speak pigeon sciencese, not actually do good science.

My preference is to use media with gobs of useful surface area with adequate flow to keep all the surfaces oxygenated. That way a small total volume can house enough bacteria to do the job. Also, I use a large-grained sand for substrate so there is all that surface area in my tank (50 x 25 cm of the top 1cm of sand equals 25-30 grams of decently oxygenated sand gives about 500 or more square meters surface area depending on the texture and porosity of the individual grains - which can increase the area by many many times). I don't use aeration in my tank and the fish and snails and shrimps and other critters seem pretty happy so I have to assume there's plenty 'nuff oxygen.

I like my tank quiet, no humming or splishy-splashy sound, because it's next to the head of my bed. Maybe I can figure out a really quiet wet-dry filter. I had to dismantle the one in the hood of my tank because it was a)noisy and b) had an ugly powerhead dangling down. Oh, and because it is way too powerful for a nine gallon planted tank.
 
I believe beneficial bacteria grows on almost any inert material that has surface area to harbor them underwater like the fish a much higher functioning organism with a brain and by mass requiring much more oxygen then bacteria are able to extract more then enough oxygen out of solution when normally saturated with 5-10 PPM oxygen. As far as canister filters go beneficial bacteria are in both the canister and the aquarium in quantities that are active to support the bio load and in a dormant stage to react to increases in bio load. I actually did an experiment where I stocked a new 120 gallon unscycled tank with 4 adult mollies and 2 Cory cats day one and used nothing more then an establish Magnum 350 canister filter off my 60 gallon heavily stocked tank (10 barbs, 5 tetra minor, 4 silver dollars, 2 Cory cats, one 7" Gobi, 2 betta M/F, 1 ADF, and 2 redwags) to establish it in 2 days. I wanted to prove rather then waiting weeks to cycle the 120 that the 120 would cycle almost immediately and the 60 tank would suffer no significant ammonia spike by swapping out magnum filters. The established magnum 350 filter from the cycled 60 tank for the uncycled new magnum 350 originally intended for the already stocked but uncycled 120 tank. The result was that both aquariums suffered only a .5 spike in ammonia almost simultaneously for 2 days before going to 0. In addition and immediately following the 0 reading on the 2nd day I purchased 4 medium size blood Parrots and placed them in the 120 tank and continued to stock weekly with no further spike in toxins. To me this was proof positive that beneficial bacteria given a healthy environment and what they need will colonize underwater in a canister as well as in the tank not only in sufficient quantity but in dormant numbers waiting to bio bloom at the fist opportunity as demonstrated in the 60 tank ability to recover without an established filter and a canister filter established for a much smaller aquarium ability to establish a tank twice the volume. But you see it makes perfect sense that they thrive underwater as our oceans and lakes are also not dependent on wet/dry filtration to grow organisms, in my very respectful opinion (IMVRO) 8^D.
 
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given a canister filter that can hold 1 gallon of media and a wet/dry that can hold 1 gallon of media, at the same flow rate, which would be able to handle a larger bioload? (i guess given the same type of media as well)
 
Most of your performance differences in different type filters are the result of not only different media and media volume but more importantly and greatly overlooked is surface area media format. Surface area not only of the microscopic in the type media we use, but equally important in the way the media if formatted for exposure to flow or GPH. You could have 2 gallons of media but if 1 gallon of media is configured and formatted to espouse twice the surface area, the 1 gallon will out perform the 2 gallon every day and twice on Saturday. The same reasons high mechanical surface area benifits hi-flow and debrise hi-filtration are the same reasons larger amounts of bacteria will colonize there. Bacteria is not too picky when it comes to colonizing as long as the environment provides surface area, is not toxic and has at least 5PPM oxygen in solution. When considering any filter system with a given GPH the most important aspect is media surface area format, the larger the format like a camera, the better the results all the way round, as in round filters lol.
 
www.marineland.com/sites/Marineland/Documents/LB12BW_manual.pdf

Please note that the 40lbs of "biomedia" is essentially porous gravel. The system contains 2 of their commercial biowheels. Each of these is about 12" wide and 10" in diameter. The stocking loads these systems are designed to handle would make the proprietor of a Chinese restaurant say "Too many fish!"
 
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