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Bio Ball removal

mfisher2112

mfisher2112

Ok, I want these things GONE!

Here's the back story:

Purchased a 90 gallon bowfront with a wet/dry system. Took WAY longer to move it than I expected, and I wanted to disturb the system as little as possible. Transported about 70% of the water during the move. The previous owner had WAY too much sand in the system, so I eliminated about half of it (actually recycled it into my 75 gallon, but that's another story). Also took the live rock down from nearly 200 lbs to about 150 lbs, there was just WAY too much rock in the tank, it was nearly jam packed. This also went into the 75 to jump start it. The tank was running for nearly 3 years PRIOR to my purchase and move.

I left everything else plumbed and in tact to avoid a cycle of anykind. The rock was transported in tubs of the aquarium water, and the filtration in the wet/dry was kept in tank water as well.

Now, the system has been stable for about a month or so, and I'm experiencing nitrate spikes, as expected. Given the size of the system, and the amount of rock etc, do you think its safe to just pull the 25 or so bio balls OUT of the wet dry and be done with them? I'd like to plan this in conjunction with about a 25% water change to start bringing down the nitrates.

Nothing has shown any ill effects from the nitrates YET. Including some zoa frags that I added to the system. Everything seems healthy and enjoying life, so to speak, but I want to nip this nitrate thing in the bud. I've dealt with nitrate issues before, and it can get ugly fast.

Thoughts?
 
R

reeftank2510

Seems like you should have plenty of rock that you could remove the bio-balls. I had a wet/dry with bio-balls and removed them without any negative impact on water quality.
 
P

phish guy

when i removed my bio-balls, i did so over the course of about a week. then in the spot they were, put a ball of cheato. worked out well for me.
 
I

Ironhorseiv

Newbie Question!
In place of, IMO, "the ugly", Bio Balls there was a suggestion for live rock . . . does the LR, which I assume is broken, smaller pieces, contribute a better from of natural filtration and aid in the overall health of the system?
 
JRWOHLER

JRWOHLER

Please someone correct me if I am wrong but I think that only some of the bacteria can grow on the bio balls while you get the second stage(or third?) growing deeper in the LR.
 
blange3

blange3

JRWOHLER said:
Please someone correct me if I am wrong but I think that only some of the bacteria can grow on the bio balls while you get the second stage(or third?) growing deeper in the LR.
Click to expand...

You are correct in your thinking James. Live rock is considered better than bio balls in two ways. First of all it is more porous and provides more surface area for aerobic forms of bacteria, that is the oxygen loving strains that break ammonia down into nitrites and nitrites down into nitrates.

The second way is that live rock can have oxygen depleted zones where anaerobic bacteria can grow. These bacteria use nitrates instead of oxygen and break it down into harmless nitrogen which is blown off at the water surface. There are some debates as to how much of this activity actually occurs in the live rock.

It always makes me laugh when folks call bio balls nitrate factories in a derisive way. That is their job!

The question is how good is your nitrate export system? Are water changes being done frequently enough? Are you exporting by harvesting macro algae? In a barebottom approach bio balls are counter productive as they trap detritus preventing it from being exported so it doesn't have to be broken down at all.

Matt, your nitrate spike is more related to reducing the depth of your sandbed if it is now less than 4"-6". If it was deeper than 4" (someone is going to tell me this isn't deep enough to be a DSB)it had oxygen depleted zones and was breaking down nitrates. Now it probably is too oxygen rich and you lost a system of breaking down nitrates.

If you want to pull the balls, you can do it all at once. You should have more than enough capacity to break down ammonia and nitrites in your existing rock.

If you pull the balls and not replace them at all, you may see a slight decrease in nitrates because detritus that would be trapped and decomposed in the balls can now be exported by the skimmer. If you replace the balls with rock, you go back to trapping detritus, but now you may have oxygen depleted zones for anaerobic bacteria to process the nitrates.

Sorry for the long post. I'm not planning on making the meeting and I needed to channel my bottled up urges to talk Reefing somwhere! ;D
 
mfisher2112

mfisher2112

Thanks Blange! I hadn't thought of the sand bed being a contributor, but I can see how it was.

The plan is to yank the current wet/dry filter system out of there and replace it with a 3 chambered sump that will contain a small fuge. I've had success with this in the past, I just didn't want to shock the system. Right now, I'm "curing" some additional rock rubble in my established sump on top of what was already in that sump to place in the new sump. Once that is finished, I will make the move. I suppose it couldn't hurt to be removing the bio balls a bit at a time now while the rock rubble cures up for the new sump.

Thanks again for the input!
 
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