How to clean bio balls?

[azpt]

I've read enough articles to make my eyes bleed about bio balls. I know there's a lot of people against them, but even these people agree that if you keep them you should at least clean them from time to time.

So here's the million dollar question, how do you clean them?

Any chemicals, time frames, just plain old tap water? hhmmm???

 

[Travis L. Stevens]

Take them out and rinse them in the purest water you have (RO/DI for example).

 

[lvpd186]

I would think the only reason to clean them is if there was a build up of detris on them. I wonder if you run the risk of killing off the bacteria by cleaning them, therefore causing your tank to cycle. Unless they have allot of crap on them I would leave them alone.

 

[jer77]

You could just use seawater to make sure you wouldn't kill anything good.

 

[Blown 346]

To properly clean bio balls and keep the beacteria on them alive you should gently shake them in your water change water ( from the tank) . This will loosen up the detritus and wont disturb the bacteria on them.
If you use RO water the bacteria wont survive and you could cause a cycle.

 

[jedi31]

Clean them using tank water from water changes or maybe if you have enough live rock you can ditch the bioballs.

 

[Blown 346]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7347595#post7347595 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by jedi31
Clean them using tank water from water changes or maybe if you have enough live rock you can ditch the bioballs.

The only safe weay to do this would be to slowly remove the bio balls. I would remove 4 or 5 at a time until they are all gone, do this over a few weeks time. Otherwise you will create another cycle.

 

[salreus]

from my understanding. If you use bio balls. you do not want to clean all of them at once. But instead, take out about 25 % and clean them. then wait a month or whatever and then clean another 25%. If you cleaned all of them, you wouldn't have a filtration system at all. And you know what happens when you don't have any filtration.

but if you wanted to ditch the bio balls as stated above. you would slowly over time remove some balls. this would allow the bacteria to accumulate elsewhere that was taken out with the balls. over time all the balls would be gone and your same bacteria load would be around.

 

[dwagner11]

When I do get around to cleaning those "things" I just clean them with an old (clean) toothbrush in a bucket of SW when I'm doing a water change. It may not be the most effective or economical way, but it works for me. And, after all, if it ain't broke don't fix it!

 

[WaterKeeper]

We do have enlighten folks here. Cleaning bio-balls or bio-wheels is not a smart idea and could indeed impact you tank. You could easily remove or entirely kill enough bacteria on the media where they would not be able to handle ammonia processing and the results could spell disaster. If you want to use them then let them be.

 

[Bluemorningwind]

I used to blast my bioballs with the flow from my return pump and poke my hand around in them a bit. You don't want to get them squicky clean, just remove the mulm and detritus that has collected in them. Then, I vacuumed out the muck that collected in the sump. Was very simple and effective.

Using a prefilter will prevent a large build up of detritus. A sock, floss or whatever...