bio balls or refuge?

[Master Shake]

lots of good and correct info in this thread about bio balls and no bio balls but no one has put it all together yet, fish stores use the bio balls because it is a good means of keeping large amounts of beneficial bacteria for their large amounts of stock that they move through. they drain and add so much water over the course of a week that nitrates usually are not a big problem in lfs besides their usual water changes, skimmers etc. I would recommend bioballs for a tank with little or no live rock, if you have a sufficient amound of lr no bio balls are needed. as far as cleaning bio balls is concerned, after the first year your tank is established you are supposed to clean a third of your bio balls, the clean ones should be placed at the bottom and the dirty ones at the top and in 6 months clean the top third then place them on the bottom rotating the bio balls and keeping the nitrate and phosphate factory relatively out of order

 

[nuch]

finally done! I think. this is the old 55 gallon sump with bio balls. And the new 75 gallon sump with 30 gallon refugium.

 

[rkaragozler]

the set up looks real nice.

 

[nuch]

 

[Will]

I was thinking of going from a reef tank to just fish and no more live rock so I had a wetdry filter lying around and I decided to start using it as a sump on my reef tank and have been for about 8 months. I know what the majority say about using them on a reef tank , nitrate factory and they don't belong on a reef tank ....I change out about 10 gal every 2 wks or so on my 58 gallon reef and have no noticible nitrate increase from the WD filter. I also change the filter pad on top of it once a month. I have yet to sart removing any of the 50 lbs of live rock as I have not entirely made up my mind as far as changing over to a fish only tank. For now it is doing good so I will leave it until I decide.

 

[Jzhou]

Nice build. I notice you're running a coralife skimmer. A quick effective mod if you run a wooden airstone in them. the skimmate is a lot better. I mostly use them as a backup though.

 

[nuch]

@ will. u should b fine as long as u dont have corals. I'm not running that corallife skimmer anymore. i cgot a reef octopus 200 now. I love it.