Remove you Bio Media????

[hermxl1]

I was looking thru some web searches and I caught a brief mention of someone saying that the bio material in a Wet/Dry filters is not needed and that you should remove the Bio Balls or whatever you use from the filter.

Anyone else know anything about that?

 

[RTR]

As W/Ds are basically biofilters, what would the purpose be if the biomedia were removed?

Would you remove the engine from your car?

 

[Phycha]

Probibly reading about the use of a W/D in a reef tank. Once there is a good amount of Liverock slowly removing the bioballs is a common thing.

 

[RTR]

But this question is in FW, where there is no such thing as live rock. But that could well be the point of confusion.

 

[Phycha]

Yes RTR. I thought i made it clear that i felt he was confusing SW/Reef tech with FW tech. As a good 90% or better of Sump/Wet-Dry uses are of the SW veriety most information on the net has to do with there use for those systems.

 

[RTR]

I can be astonishingly literal - when someone asks a question in FW, I assume it refers to FW. Besides, I only use W/Ds for FW - I have no idea what the distribution of the filters is FW vs SW, but I see little point in using a W/D and removing the biomedia. That is major setup and non-trivial expense for short-term use. What a waste - very strange to me. Sumps have no particular linkage to either FW or SW, they can be equally useful in either water condition.

 

[Phycha]

As often occurs with SW is that people start Fish Only and later develop a taste for Inverts and start to transition there tanks to Reefs. The W/D portion of the sump is needed for the FO setup. But as the transition to Reef happons the dependeds on the W/D for increased Suface area is reduced and finaly not needed all together. They simply convert them into Sumps. As with most people who deside to change there setup equipment becomes obsoleat. Its a waste no dout but is the nature of change.

 

[hermxl1]

Sorry I'm just getting back to this thread but let me clear up any confusion there may be on my original question.

I may well have originally read "remove your bio media" comments in a posts that were referencing SW. Maybe that post did not make the point clear that they were talking about SW and since I can't remember where I read it, I'll assume that was the context of the discussion.

I agree RTR, it seemed to me like removing the engine from a car and that's why I posted this question in the first place.
But like Phycha mentioned, I may want to switch one day from FW to SW and some sort of Reef system which is why I went with a W/D system. Nice to know I'm still on right track. Thanks guys.