So you don't actually know that Substrat pro degrades any slower than Substrat or any other media.
yes i do, it does. vastly slower. indeed its hard to find any debris from it. but the filters with plain substrate, has debris and show the signs with reduced volume. you can also see the edges of the media rounding. plus the substrate bag(when new) had a fair amount of dust in it. Pro had, virtually, none.
plain substrate, is broken, uneven chunks of ceramic media.
substrate pro is properly formed balls, though in various sizes. and is made of a different material.
kit why are you linking tetra info. its irrelevant to this thread
I specifically said EHEIM mech media. and did say other makers do make/sell porous ceramic rings.
once again, Eheim Ehfi Mech is none porous. and not suited to carrying Bio collony. other than by a covering of bio film.
no, no photo of clumping. but most will notice higher area's of build-up, when cleaning their media. its also a common phanomina is all loose material filtration. pool filter sand being specifically designed, to avoid this. (smooth edges with a regular shape.)
there is a fair amount of fish waste that turns to ammonia, virtually, as it contacts water. same with human water waste. no ammonia content (or minute) but breaks down to ammonia very fast.
so it becomes chemical waste.
so lets cover what Eheim actually say about Ehfi mech, and its brothers
EHEIM Mech: Mechanical filter medium for effective water treatment
Packing sizes: 1 l, 5 l
Directly after the entry into the filter cycle, the water is swirled through the hollow ceramic material. Through this action, the coarse dirt particles are going down. The pre-filtered water treated in such a way then continues its route through the other filter layers.
EHEIM Mech is easy to clean and can be used several times.
no mention of bio function. as i stated
EHEIM bioMECH: Mechanical-biological filter medium
Packing sizes: 1l, 2l, 5l
Excellent mechanical filtration with special dirt-trapping pockets Optimum pore structure ensures faster and safer decomposition of toxins
no mention of any bio function there. except to aid decomposition. again as i stated.
EHEIM MECHpro
Its unique spiral shape ensures excellent trapping of even small dirt particles <li>The ribbed surface structure also allows the colonisation of bacteria which break down toxins, thus guaranteeing an additional biological water cleaning
not ceramic rings. so i didnt mention it before.
so to the volume. as its volume that media area is measured in not surface area. something that surprised me at the time. but if you have trouble contact bignose. he explained it to me.
the reason i said nobody knows is because they dont. they have a theoretical figure, but no more.they cannot make each ball or chunk of media exact the same. all they can do is make it the same way.
the figures i was quoted by Eheim were indeed the same. (so long ago). the advantages, in volume/area are gained by having less of the pores blocked or covered by adjoin bits of media. coupled with the fact that regular shaped (spherical) causes far less resistance to water, allowing more even distribution of the water flowing through. the constant movement of the media balls also help avoid the media pores blocking with any larger waste that get through. and clumping, dont forget clumping.
there are a couple of other bits, i will cover later. (bit rushed now.)
/eheim.de/eheim/inhalte/index.jsp?key=liniendetail_38154_ehen
