Why do bioballs get bashed? Scientifically...

[SDatl404]

I have read many threads on bioballs and everyone says they're NO3 factories in a bad way and to use live rock instead. The consensus is that the live rock provides areas deep in the rock that lack oxygen for a certain bacteria type to break down NO3.

What I don't understand is how the NO3 gets to those areas in live rock if they have no flow. If the bacteria can't survive in other high oxygen areas it wouldn't be an effective means of NO3 reduction without a constant supply of food. Maybe particles slowly work they're way into the crevices similar to the sand bed. I still don't think live rock would be remotely as good as the sand bed and not worth mentioning as a benefit. The sand bed is constantly getting stirred up by the CNC allowing particles to work their way to the low oxygen areas.

What I also don't understand is how being NO3 factories is a bad thing. If you're using the appropriate pre-filters to remove large particles and you're still getting high NO3 from the bioballs then it's seems one would have another issue. Like over feeding or an excessively high bioload. Requiring more frequent water changes or another means of NO3 reduction. :strooper:

 

[disc1]

Bioballs don't complete the nitrogen cycle. They generally get ammonia to nitrate then just stop. So nitrate begins to build up.

As for how does the nitrate get into those anoxic places in the live rock... diffusion. You don't need any flow at all for that to happen.

 

[Palting]

It's a fad, sort of like mob mentality that occurs in any large congregation of people. OTOH, there is also truth to the fact that live rock can degrade nitrate whereas bioballs cannot, so live rock is better than biobballs as the primary biological filtration system for reef tanks. Unfortunately, this truth has gotten distorted and exagerated to the extent that the impression the reader gets is that you should get rid of your bioballs or else your tank will crash.

One other truth that is often negelcted is that even a tank with no bioballs and all live rock will still produce nitrates and will still have issues related to nitrate production. Just look at all the posts about algae and nitrate levels on this forum, and look at all the additional activity and equipment needed to handle the nitrate. There's water changes, theres , refugia, there's ATS, etc, etc, etc. I guess for the bioball bashers, their reason to bash bioballs would be that the nitrate level is less with liverock?

 

[DHyslop]

Bioballs don't complete the nitrogen cycle. They generally get ammonia to nitrate then just stop. So nitrate begins to build up.

As for how does the nitrate get into those anoxic places in the live rock... diffusion. You don't need any flow at all for that to happen.

I'll take it a step further and say that I do think bioballs make nitrates worse. No mechanical filtration is perfect, and trickle filters are places that trap a lot of debris and are extremely difficult to clean. If you take all the bioballs out of a typical trickle filter you'll probably find a lot of debris trapped in the bioballs and maybe a layer underneath on the bottom of the filter. All this stuff is fish poop, old food or tissues that could otherwise be exported from the system but instead rots in place. Most consumer designs, like the ProClear filters for example, are designed in a way that's extremely difficult to clean, especially the ones with two bioball chambers.

Bioballs are a very powerful tool for nitrification of fish waste. But if there's one thing the hobby has learned over the last decade it's that bacteria in live rock and biofilms can handle the same nitrification without breaking a sweat.

Plenty of people have had good luck with bioballs. More power to you. But if you're starting a new tank; why stack the deck against you with something you don't really need?

Most of that isn't very controversial. I'll go out on a bit of a limb though and say that I don't think most LR does much to remove nitrate. Most live rock available in the hobby is poor quality, and kept in stagnant vats at LFS that end up being nutrient sinks. What's more, the constant refrain of needing up to 2 lb/gallon causes people to get a lot more than they need, creating vast dead zones where detritus settles but can never be cleaned. I'm not saying LR is bad and you shouldn't get it, just that you should shop around and not pack it into your tank.

While they are out there I haven't seen that many tanks that will keep low nitrates all by themselves with live rock alone. Meanwhile a couple dollars worth of vinegar a month can hold it down below the 0.1 mg/L that a Salifert test can detect.

 

[SDatl404]

Bioballs don't complete the nitrogen cycle. They generally get ammonia to nitrate then just stop. So nitrate begins to build up.

As for how does the nitrate get into those anoxic places in the live rock... diffusion. You don't need any flow at all for that to happen.

Can you elaborate on diffusion?

If NO3 can get to those areas how can O2 not?

I'll take it a step further and say that I do think bioballs make nitrates worse. No mechanical filtration is perfect, and trickle filters are places that trap a lot of debris and are extremely difficult to clean. If you take all the bioballs out of a typical trickle filter you'll probably find a lot of debris trapped in the bioballs and maybe a layer underneath on the bottom of the filter. All this stuff is fish poop, old food or tissues that could otherwise be exported from the system but instead rots in place. Most consumer designs, like the ProClear filters for example, are designed in a way that's extremely difficult to clean, especially the ones with two bioball chambers.

If that waste is getting trapped in the bioballs where else would it go? The sand bed? Inside some crevice in the live rock? All waste not mechanically removed has to be broken down some where. Also, I don't see how waste would get trapped if you always keep a clean efficient pre-filter before the bioballs.

 

[Palting]

I'll take it a step further and say that I do think bioballs make nitrates worse. No mechanical filtration is perfect, and trickle filters are places that trap a lot of debris and are extremely difficult to clean. If you take all the bioballs out of a typical trickle filter you'll probably find a lot of debris trapped in the bioballs and maybe a layer underneath on the bottom of the filter. All this stuff is fish poop, old food or tissues that could otherwise be exported from the system but instead rots in place. Most consumer designs, like the ProClear filters for example, are designed in a way that's extremely difficult to clean, especially the ones with two bioball chambers.

See? This is what I am talking about. A lot of miisinformation about bioballs have been repeated so often they eventually are taken as truth.

I have used bioball filtration and have used it successfully for 5 years in a prior tank.

Most trickle filters have trays for the filter pads are designed to be easy to remove and then either clean or replace. The one I had before for a reef and now revived for a FOWLR is the MaxiFlo by AGA/Aqueon. Rinsing to clean is as simple as sliding the tray out and running tap water over the filter pad then sliding it back in again. Replacing is also as simple as buying a cheap filter pad and cutting it to size, maybe once every 3 months or so.

Properly maintained, bioballs DO NOT accumulate debris. And by properly maintained I mean rinsing or replacing the filter pads ONLY. You DO NOT need and in fact SHOULD NOT clean the bioballs themselves. The bioballs sit up above the water level. Water that has been prefiltered cascades over the bioballs. This cascade creates a waterfall effect, washing the bioballs. The end result is that the bioballs are covered with a thin slime of beneficial bacteria, and there is no "debris". After 5 years of just rinsing or replacing the prefilters, the bioballs I had had no debris at all in them.

Don't get me wrong. For the new aquarist starting out, I do recommend liverock over bioballs anytime. What I am trying to rectify here is the large amount of vehement misinformation being handed out about bioballs.

 

[brandon429]

Not once have I ever seen live rock perform the duties of denitrification, not once. I see it written on the web about having no nitrate using it, just not ever in person across a thousand tanks Ive tested. Theory doesn't always translate into practicality.

Bioballs won't sink phosphate like live rock will, so the debate continues. So as we read this someone is going to chime in and say I have no nitrate since Im using live rock...but in every nano I'll see at the local fish store, and at friends houses, packed with perfect live rock, there will always be nitrate because the denitrification going on in lr is useless against the bioloads we present.

Bioballs are not any more of a nitrate factory than live rock, unless its your magic live rock thats about to be reported.

 

[buffalo123]

The argument against bioballs usually is; it a debri trap. Proper Maintainance would prevent that from overwhelming the system. In this hoby we like to bash things as majority moves away from them.

 

[brandon429]

agreed, and even on that note LR is worse, its more porous. surface area is the trap...

 

[sslak]

Not once have I ever seen live rock perform the duties of denitrification, not once. I see it written on the web about having no nitrate using it, just not ever in person across a thousand tanks Ive tested. Theory doesn't always translate into practicality.

Bioballs won't sink phosphate like live rock will, so the debate continues. So as we read this someone is going to chime in and say I have no nitrate since Im using live rock...but in every nano I'll see at the local fish store, and at friends houses, packed with perfect live rock, there will always be nitrate because the denitrification going on in lr is useless against the bioloads we present.

Bioballs are not any more of a nitrate factory than live rock, unless its your magic live rock thats about to be reported.

Are you saying all nano tanks with live rock has nitrates? I ran 0 nitrates on my 14g BioCube consistently for years.

What was removing the nitrate from my system if not the bacteria contained in the live rock?

 

[brandon429]

Yours is the rare/magic stuff

In 100% of every nano tank Ive ever actually seen and tested, they had nitrates. even the fishless ones. If there was feed input into the tank, they had nitrate. I say keep what you got its rare! You might be skimming so well it removes the primary protein before it breaks down? But if left to LR alone, I always see nitrates when testing in person.

 

[nrbelk]

Can you elaborate on diffusion?

If NO3 can get to those areas how can O2 not?

I think that NO3 will get there and oxygen won't because the oxygen is actively used before it gets to the oxygen deprived zones. If there weren't organisms using the O2, then yes, diffusion would also deliver O2 to those same places.

But since O2 is being used up on its way to those locations and NO3 isn't, the NO3 makes it there.

 

[MrTuskfish]

This isn't intended to be scientific, but I think its understandable:
Bio-Balls culture aerobic bacteria and reduce ammonia to nitrite, then to nitrate very well. But the nitrate is just released into the water column and must randomly find its way to the anaerobic bacteria that turns nitrate into harmless nitrogen gas. This is very ineffective.
LR, has cultures of aerobic bacteria at the entrances to the zillions of pores that culture anaerobic bacteria. The aerobic bacteria does its job and the anaerobic bacteria follow up with their work. In LR, the two types of bacteria colonize right next to each other (basically) and the nitrate isn't randomly spread through the water column. Much more efficient. IMO, the term"nitrate factory" may be misleading. A system with bio-balls won't produce more nitrate than the same system without them. In any system, a certain amount of nitrate will be produced; where it is produced makes a big difference.
BTW, Berlin System tanks keep nitrates at near zero with only LR and a skimmer.

 

[disc1]

Can you elaborate on diffusion?

Diffusion is the process by which dissolved ions and molecules move from areas of high concentration to areas of low concentration. For example, if you mix a drop of saltwater into a glass of freshwater and wait for a short time, the salt is no longer just in one little spot but spreads all around to all of the water.

The driving force behind this is beyond discussion here, but it occurs even across semipermeable materials. An example is dialysis or osmosis. If you put a solution with a high concentration of some ion and separate it from a solution with a low concentration of that ion by a semipermeable membrane, the ion or molecule will diffuse across that membrane until the concentrations are equal on both sides. So the simple fact that the rock is wet and the water in the rock has a lower nitrate content than the water outside the rock (because what's inside is being consumed by bacteria) means that nitrate will move into the rock.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion

If NO3 can get to those areas how can O2 not?

Oxygen gets used up along the way while nitrate does not. If there was nothing living there, a perfectly sterile environment, then oxygen too would slowly diffuse into the rock. However there are a number of organisms on the way in living in progressively more oxygen depleted areas that are grabbing up that oxygen for respiration.

Think of a bunch of girls walking into the club. They're going to "diffuse" all over to all different parts of the club. But the pretty single ones are going to get snatched up before they get very far from the door. So if you are waiting in the back, you might think there aren't any pretty single ladies at the club tonight. But the ugly girls and the ones with rings on their fingers don't get messed with and they might be spread all over.

 

[Khemul]

Live rock looks more natural. Simple reason why it took over. That is it. Everything else is justification. Debris isn't a issue really, simply put a filter pad over top the bioballs (plus, has anyone actually taken a turkey baster to a live rock cave? :lmao. Nitrates, same reason people criticize biowheels. But the only way bioballs add more nitrates is if the person has less live rock. If the person has live rock plus bioballs, then the live rock is still doing its job either way.


Same concept in freshwater. Filtration systems tend to be built on massive redundancy. Especially for people who know what they are doing. Live rock + bioballs + the glass & plumbing + sand + sump equipment = massive redundancy. You can take away any of those (although taking away the glass & plumbing is not recommended within a gravity well...) and the system will still run. Hell, people get by on only two of those quite commonly.

Really, the best argument against bioballs is you don't need them. Doesn't really hurt to run them. But they are redundant within a system already designed to without them.

 

[fishroomlady]

Can you expound on the vinegar reduction stated earlier in this thread?

 

[disc1]

Can you expound on the vinegar reduction stated earlier in this thread?

Bacteria, and any other organism on earth, is made up of primarily five elements. Carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, sulfur, and phosphorus. Oh and hydrogen too, but that's another matter.

The growth of bacteria is typically limited by carbon, meaning there is enough of the other elements to make a bacterium, but not enough carbon. So providing a carbon source, a food if you will, for those bacteria can help them to multiply.

So we feed the tank with a little bit of ethanol (vodka is most common) or vinegar, or even sugar in some cases and the bacteria consume this food and make more bacteria. In the process, it takes nitrogen and phosphorus as well to make a bacterium. So the nitrate and phosphate in the tank gets consumed along with the vinegar to make more bacteria.

Now we get to our skimmer. A lot of these bacteria will be floating around and the skimmer will manage to pull them out. In the process, you are removing all of the phosphate and nitrate that the bacteria consumed to create their little bodies.

The overall process is a little more involved than that, but you get the gist of it. Do a quick search in the chemistry forum. There is a TON of information on carbon dosing / vodka dosing / vinegar dosing / biopellets that will help you to see how you can use these methods to reduce the nutrients in your tank.

 

[brandon429]

david lmfao at the club analogy

 

[disc1]

david lmfao at the club analogy

You would have loved my chemistry class when I was still teaching.

 

[buffalo123]

So basically we are skimming away bacteria and the bacteria food they need to make more bacteria to keep our nitrates down . Then we add vodka or sugar ..so the bacteria feed and multiply. So the number one issue with bioballs is they trap debris. So then we have too much food for the baceria to handle with all the trap debris??
Would bioballs or biorings be good if they had some kind of flush occasionally