Bio Balls & Ceramic Rings

[j47n3]

Just helping my work collegue set up her tanks again my husband runs our tanks on external canister filters and all he has in them is filter floss he got rid of bio balls and ceramic rings as he was told they are nitrate factories needless to say it's been successful so we've advised the girl in question to remove balls and rings from canister filter. The problem being she keeps getting the opposite advise from the bloke who supplied the tank set up and the local pet shop. So my question is better with or without bio balls and ceramic rings?

 

[Caprichoso]

I always thought that filter floss was intended to trap large particles and detritus, not for the intention to be used to culture bacterial colonies. The bio/ceramic rings have large surface areas that are beneficial places for bacteria to colonize. That is their primary purpose and should not be removed as you would be removing huge bacterial colonies. I've not had an issue with nitrate personally. That being said, obviously it's working for you but to tell your friend to remove them may cause some issues. If she wants to go with your method, tell her to take out the bio-rings slowly and switch to the filter floss so that the bacteria has a chance to re-colonize properly.

 

[coldcazzie]

Nitrate factories? isn't that the point?!

Ammonia produced by fish > nitrite > nitrate (by bacteria colonising the filter). Anything you put it in the filter will eventually grow a colony of bacteria on it that will process the ammonia produced by your fish in the same way, the end product being nitrate. If you want to designated it a "factory" I guess that's as good a term as anything else, but the point remains: any filter will produce nitrate, and the amount of nitrate produced is dictated by the number and size of fish, the amount of food you feed them, and the amount of detritus you have on the substrate surface, not by whether you use ceramic rings/bioballs/filter floss in your filter. Generally, external medias are ordered in the order of: floss to remove floating mulm, then some kind of media with large surface area to grow bacteria (rings, balls, sponges, more floss), then some kind of polishing agent (fine floss, purigen, etc).

There's nothing wrong per se with using just floss, but there's nothing wrong with using rings and balls either.

 

[StandbySetting]

The whole nitrate factory problem applies to Salt Water fish only, where a near 0 value is preferred, regardless of what media you're using the same bacteria will colonies there. Filter floss will be restricting the flow into your filter, replace with Ceramic rings or Bio balls.