Why do bioballs get bashed? Scientifically...

[SDatl404]

There is always oxygen in the water yes. But none of it makes it very deep into the rock bed past organisms that use it.

The oxygen is replenished from the surface of the tank, not all throughout. It diffuses quickly through the water but more slowly through the porous rock. So there is a pretty constant level through the water column and a gradient to near zero as you go deeper and deeper into a porous substrate like a rock. It isn't an opinion or a theory. It is simple science. You may be having a hard time understanding, but that doesn't mean it is not understood.

Do you have any fact to back this up? I have a hard time accepting O2 levels are non existent at the bottom of the aquarium. You say it's science but provide no logic and it contradicts what's being said about diffusion. Personally I feel O2 is EVERYWHERE not sealed in an aquarium and probably has an easier time diffusing then NO3.

I'm not trying to argue. More understand. I am tired of flying blindly into spending money in this hobby.

 

[disc1]

Do you have any fact to back this up? I have a hard time accepting O2 levels are non existent at the bottom of the aquarium. You say it's science but provide no logic and it contradicts what's being said about diffusion. Personally I feel O2 is EVERYWHERE not sealed in an aquarium and probably has an easier time diffusing then NO3.

I'm not trying to argue. More understand. I am tired of flying blindly into spending money in this hobby.

Pick up any undergraduate basic chemistry text and you can learn about these things for yourself. Its like asking me to prove the sky is blue. It just is and I doubt anyone would bother to go measure it specifically for rocks in an aquarium any more than there would be a paper to prove the water is wet.

Nitrate is an ion and oxygen is a neutral molecule. How could you possibly think oxygen diffuses faster than nitrate? You're making stuff up. You have no idea do you. You're just being argumentative at this point.

Yes, if the tank was completely sterile you would be right. There would be oxygen evenly throughout. Like my club analogy except there aren't any guys in the club to pick up the girls. But in a live rock full of aerobic bacteria, the rate of consumption is greater than the rate of diffusion for oxygen. So oxygen doesn't make it so deep into the rock.

 

[brandon429]

I specifically remember reading that oxygen is completely outranked by CO2 in the ability to dissolve at any temp in water. Oxygen is last among several molecules I can think of now, dissolution affinity if I recall. its not easy to maintain in a water column, we have to work at it. CO2 likes to come in and out much faster.

 

[Khemul]

Do you have any fact to back this up? I have a hard time accepting O2 levels are non existent at the bottom of the aquarium. You say it's science but provide no logic and it contradicts what's being said about diffusion. Personally I feel O2 is EVERYWHERE not sealed in an aquarium and probably has an easier time diffusing then NO3.

I'm not trying to argue. More understand. I am tired of flying blindly into spending money in this hobby.

The O2 diffuses with the NO3, but the bacteria on the front line use the O2 and let the NO3 pass, since they don't need it. In a sense, you also have NO3 being pushed down the line because the bacteria using the O2 are releasing NO3 themselves. So by the time the diffusion reaches the depths of the rock the oxygen is depleted. There is more coming in behind it, but the bacteria don't get full so they keep using it. Sort of like a conveyor belt, the production line in front is always using up product A, so product A never reaches the end of the belt.


The question really becomes how deep this happens. Previously it was thought "deep" and this is why the theory says it happens within live rock. If it is happening at a more shallow point thought then it could in theory occur in a lot more places we don't think about. I believe Seachem has some bio-media that works on this principle, but at a much shallower point then live rock and DSB's.

 

[disc1]

I'm not going to pretend to know what the rate of nitrate to nitrogen conversion is and I would be certain that it would vary from tank to tank. I'm not even going to say that it is a dominant process.

But I'm also not going to just make up a bunch of nonsense and call it science. All I'm doing here is correcting the misconceptions about how a thing can happen or not. These ARE things I know. It isn't difficult science.

 

[cloak]

I didn't read through the whole thread entirely, but there are a lot of hobbyists who posted that should have no problem whatsoever running a tank with a wet/dry. It's not the most efficient these days in a reef, but it can work in the right hands. (husbandry)

 

[disc1]

I specifically remember reading that oxygen is completely outranked by CO2 in the ability to dissolve at any temp in water. Oxygen is last among several molecules I can think of now, dissolution affinity if I recall. its not easy to maintain in a water column, we have to work at it. CO2 likes to come in and out much faster.

Exactly. CO2 ionizes to form carbonic acid. Ions are always more soluble than neutral molecules in water. Oxygen is not only neutral but absolutely zero dipole moment. Nonpolar molecules are the hardest to dissolve in water.

 

[DHyslop]

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.

My opinions have been formed by years of experience professionally maintaining dozens of reef and FO systems. Most of these tanks were installed by a local business that's still quite bioball happy. Some of these tanks do very well with bioballs, but after converting more than eight trickle filters to bare-bottom sumps in the last year alone I feel fairly confident in my position on this. I mentioned in my original post that not everyone with bioballs has problems, instead just that many do and as such it's a system I don't recommend.

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.

I don't like the tray system. It's my experience that in many tanks, flat filter pads clog quicker than filter socks and within a couple days unfiltered water flows over the top. As I've said repeatedly this is a generalization based on my experience and it does work well for some tanks, clearly including yours. I think a better system for trickle filters involves the tall "pre-chamber" with filter socks that overflows into the trickle chamber. This is more complicated and expensive and fewer sump boxes are available like this.

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.

More power to you if it works for you. I've seen some tanks that do well with them, too. I've also seen plenty of systems where the flat pads allow a lot of detritus to get past, meaning detritus does get trapped in large amounts in the bioballs. The balls are made to have lots of cracks and crevices which do trap debris when it is present. I've seen trickle filters where there's a half inch layer of debris on the floor of the sump, in the space below the bioballs. The design of many sumps prevent this area from being cleaned at all without removing all the bioballs. Some sumps, like the double-chamber ProClear units, have areas that are essentially impossible to clean.

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.

This is precisely the same thing that I'm saying. I don't consider it misinformation because I observe it with my own eyes across multiple tanks. Some do well, many do not. You have a tank that does well, so you assume that all will.

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.

A system that requires more maintenance is less likely to get adequate maintenance and is therefore more likely to fail. The hobby and industry have determined unequivocally that bioballs are not required for a successful tank, so why add a component that's all liability with no benefit?

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

Live rock put into a trickle filter will have the same problem. We're discussing simply using an adequate volume of live rock in the display tank (or a fuge area) with adequate in-tank circulation to prevent detritus from settling.

 

[brandon429]

So if we consider just the original comparison, live rock to bioballs, I say you get the exact same nitrate output! minus some debatable .000000x decimals but the theory that lr has a degassing leg up over them, not buying it. All systems with live rock as the primary filtration still make nitrate. what they remove pales in comparison to our input of raw ammonia so there is no net benefit, until you add skimmers, refug's, sandbeds of any size, denitrator coils, external dsb's etc

What live rock does to nitrate is the most oversold, overstated thing Ive ever seen
in reefing
agreed?

 

[Anemone]

The problem I have with this explanation is that O2 is always present in the aquarium even though it's used it's replenished much faster then NO3. Also if diffusion was that slow the NO3 would overwhelm the diffusion process and also saturate the rock with nitrates creating only a small benefit. Hence, PH reading from what I understand of it, is basically a measurement of O2/CO2 in the water and in the provided explanation the pH would be nearly 0.

O2 is not replenished that quickly in low flow zones, especially if you have a bacterial population that strips the oxygen from the water in these areas. And why do you think NO3 would overwhelm the diffusion process (or any process)? One thing bacteria is good at is growing until it reaches some limiting factor.

Also, who told you that pH is a measurement of O2/CO2 in the water?

Kevin

 

[brandon429]

the reason Im against live rock as a nitrogen degasser is trying to attain that in my system with a perfect balance, and it can't be attained. I have a gallon reef, 5lbs of pristine holey live rock aged well and not all plugged up with coralline, its basted frequently, no fish, a nominal coral bioload, a six inch sandbed (set up before we knew about shallow beds doing the same job) no skimmer, no refug, no bells and whistles, and after seven years the nitrate constant for my feeding is always 5 ppm, never lower. 5 lbs of live rock in a single gallon should be able to degas it, if it ever was.

Theory robs us of actuality many times in reefkeeping. if I had a dollar where an actual experiment setup up went against book theory I could afford a larger tank.

 

[Bruno3047]

A lot of the "crap" that guys (and gals) see on their bio-balls, that leads them to believe the story that their bio-balls are "nitrate factories" is not crap at all, but merely the colonies of beneficial bacteria that has accumulated on the bio-balls over time. Anyone who thinks he has to "clean" these bio-balls, and then goes ahead and does that, does a very foolish thing.

 

[SDatl404]

Pick up any undergraduate basic chemistry text and you can learn about these things for yourself. Its like asking me to prove the sky is blue. It just is and I doubt anyone would bother to go measure it specifically for rocks in an aquarium any more than there would be a paper to prove the water is wet.

Nitrate is an ion and oxygen is a neutral molecule. How could you possibly think oxygen diffuses faster than nitrate? You're making stuff up. You have no idea do you. You're just being argumentative at this point.

Yes, if the tank was completely sterile you would be right. There would be oxygen evenly throughout. Like my club analogy except there aren't any guys in the club to pick up the girls. But in a live rock full of aerobic bacteria, the rate of consumption is greater than the rate of diffusion for oxygen. So oxygen doesn't make it so deep into the rock.

If I had an idea or thought I knew why would I be asking? Seeing how you're getting rude/arrogant about this it's not hard to see why you're no longer a teacher.

I am no lemming, so expecting me to just except what you say as fact is very unscientific of you. I am done with this as I didn't come on here to fight. If you don't wish to discuss then feel free to leave the thread.

This is the core selling point of live rock over bioballs:

O2 gets used up before diffusing into the rock leaving pockets completely lacking O2 in the live rock allowing a particular bacteria to consume NO3 that can't survive where O2 is present.

These are the issues I have with that theory:
- I would think an O2 molecule is so small that there couldn't be adequate surface area worth mentioning this as a benefit.
- I seriously doubt there is enough bioload on the O2 to create areas that completely lack the molecule.
- If the bacteria can't survive in O2 how did it get in the rock in the first place?

Reasons why I think bioballs should still be considered
- The use of either bioballs or live rock in a filter is going to create NO3 to the point where both would require some sort of external NO3 removal process. Seeing as bioballs contain more surface area they could potentially get the other toxins out of the water faster moving the NO3 to it's exporter faster.
- Bioballs don't scratch acrylic or damage glass.
- Bioballs are sterile and don't contain problematic hitch hikers.
- Bioballs are cheap.
- Bioballs are easy to monitor for buildups of detritus.

My only goal is the ideal filtration. :fish2:

 

[brandon429]

imo you have to use plants to get the ideal filtration, so go ATS or a huge refugium then you can get control of nitrate naturally.

 

[brandon429]

This begs yet another question.

In freshwater planted tanks, not all plants takeup nitrate at the speed some can use raw ammonia, it varies among genera. I wonder if marine fixation is the same...different among species, maybe some of our refugium flora isn't the kind that likes to grab nitrate from the water column. refugiums we know can't use plants to take in a whole waste protein in suspension in the water column...they have to wait for bacteria to degrade the protein into constituents/then the plants grab the nitrate out of the water and use it or not based on differences among given plants? thats tricky, would like to know I wonder if a well flowed refugium has plants that grab ammonia out of the water faster than it can be acted on by substrate bacteria.

 

[SDatl404]

O2 is not replenished that quickly in low flow zones, especially if you have a bacterial population that strips the oxygen from the water in these areas. And why do you think NO3 would overwhelm the diffusion process (or any process)? One thing bacteria is good at is growing until it reaches some limiting factor.

Also, who told you that pH is a measurement of O2/CO2 in the water?

Kevin

I read this when I was having an issue with my PH only to find out it was my reef controller grounding. The article told me that to raise and lower PH you need to add/remove CO2 and I assumed you needed the opposite to raise it. I guess now it's just the lack there of that raises it.

 

[milonedp]

My understanding is that it is just the bio-balls themselves but the position of biological filter and the order in which organics are processed.

You want the skimmer to remove as much of the organics as you can so there is less organics processed by the biological filter ultimately ending in less Nitrate, even if you have a good method of of denitrification (Nitrate to Nitrogen Gas), Water Changes, Algae Scrubber, Refugium, Carbon Dosing, Deep Sand Bed, Live Rock, etc.. the less Nitrate initially produced the better.

Older style wet drys had the biological filter first, going from ammonia to nitrite to nitrate before it got to the skimmer. If you had the skimmer first then less strain on the bio-media ultimately leads to less Nitrate and less that your de-nitrification system needs to process. So its not necessarily that bio-balls are inherently bad but rather because it was happening first and it couldn't complete the denitrification process, Nitrate to Nitrogen Gas. So people started leaning toward the other methods that could also handle both the biological filtration AND denitrification like Live Rock.

Organics => Ammonia => Nitrite => Nitrate => skimmer (less skimmate) - you have Nitrate left to deal with
Skimmer => less organics => Ammonia => Nitrite => Nitrate - you have less Nitrate in the same system to deal with

There are a great many ways to set up a system to be successful but you have to be consistent and integrated across that system and not mix competing methods but rather use complimentary methods. When people didn't do that they ended up blaming one approach or another. In reality its less about that and more about making sure you have a holistic approach that works for your system.

 

[KafudaFish]

Don't always go by internet "evidence" but the rate is discussed about 2/3 of the way down:

http://www.eoearth.org/article/Marine_nitrogen_cycle

 

[Anemone]

what they remove pales in comparison to our input of raw ammonia so there is no net benefit, until you add skimmers, refug's, sandbeds of any size, denitrator coils, external dsb's etc

Disagree completely. And so far, you have offered nothing to support your opinion.

What live rock does to nitrate is the most oversold, overstated thing Ive ever seen

Again, disagree completely. You are ignoring the science and chemistry involved to make broad statements with no foundation.

Kevin

 

[SDatl404]

In theory wouldn't this have the best result:

Skimmer => Polyfilter => Bioballs(Higher NO3 Production - More Surface Area) => Carbon Dosing(Biopellets as one example) = Lower water toxins(Ammonia/Nitrite)

This is most people recommend:

Skimmer => Polyfilter => Live Rock(Lower NO3 Production - Less Surface Area) => Carbon Dosing(Biopellets as one example) = Higher water toxins(Ammonia/Nitrite)

Just a theory.

BTW anyone wanting to know why the sky is blue go here: http://www.sciencemadesimple.com/sky_blue.html