Ceramic Rings

[waterdrop]

Gooood Morning Advisors!

(boy am I a sucker, a beginner who keeps asking "why?" and finds that yes indeed, it's a big hobby with a lot of stuff to learn and the people who have been doing it a lot have thought about this stuff a LOT! -- even if I have trouble absorbing it all (or should I say adsorbing, ha) at least I think I have found a really active alive set of forums - impressive)

OK, here we go.. Since you have taken the time to instruct me here on my "ceramic rings" topic I felt I should "do my homework" and keep focused on it a bit, so I motored over to the local fish isles (isles as in big store, not the lush islands where our fish would really be happier!)

At the store I examined those things I was calling "ceramic rings" and discovered that I was once again over-simplifying their nature. My newbie eyes had glanced at them previously and jumped to the erroneous conclusion that they were shiny, slick little rings fired up right along with Her Majesties' fine china. Now I see that they are anything but that! They are are rough and porous, and all the bio media types I could find are like that. (ok, yes, that is the point(!).. to get more surface area.. to repeat the obvious before someone tells me.)

So from an understanding-the-science standpoint this is both good and bad. Good because more surface area makes sense. Bad because now it makes me wonder if the tiny little holes in the "ceramic" (its not always really ceramic, is it?) which are probably going to get black and clogged are really providing the perfect cave for the bacteria to live or whether the first bacteria to get there die after a while and other bacteria are living on top of those and the end result is less surface area (or perhaps -more- surface area when looked at down on the single cell level I guess(!)).

Obviously a lot of you have been using this stuff for quite a while and your tanks are quite stable and your water tests indicate your bacteria colonies are large and healthy so this I presume is just a science question and not so much a practical fish-keeping issue, other than the steady desire to improve the effectiveness of bio-media over the years within the hobby knowledge base.

OK, I'm hoping to make a couple more posts with more practical questions soon to follow...
-waterdrop-

 

[waterdrop]

OK, followup #1 from above:

First, I want to ask my mentor (rdd1952), if he sees this, whether he still uses and likes the Matrix product from Seachem (hope I'm remembering that right.) I think someone else pointed this out a while back and then Chrispixx pointed it out in this thread. I read the info at Seachem and then studied the little rockshaped things which are indeed available at the big local store. Anyway the idea looks good and they would be available to me...

-waterdrop-

 

[waterdrop]

OK, followup #2 from above:

I want to followup on CFC's comment:

What are "Efi substrat pro" and "alphagrog?"

Are these other commercial attempts at increased bacterial substrate surface area like Seachem Matrix?

What are the pros and cons?

Thanks, -waterdrop-

 

[waterdrop]

OK, followup#3 from above:

Thank you Chrispixx for replying about the media bags: what it made me realize is that the HOB styles don't usually have individual media baskets so the bag keeps the loose media together, whereas the cannister models usually have the baskets. Its as simple as that, isn't it?

Really, the plastic media baskets from the cannister filters must be easier to manage, right? You just lift it out, clamp your hand over it and shake it around underwater in a bucket of your just-removed aquarium water-change water. Because its not in a cloth bag, you can then see when it has been cleaned enough of debris, right?

-waterdrop-

 

[waterdrop]

OK, followup #4 from above:

Thanks OohFeeshy and CFC for making me think harder: Yes, of course it makes sense that the ceramic media would continue to maintain the largest bulk of the bio-colony even though you lose a bunch of it when the sponge is squeezed out. Even if you swirl your basket of ceramics underwater to clean it, it will probably maintain more colony than the sponge squeezing does.

Path of Least Resistance: Very interesting! CFC, is this a pretty well-known thing? When new, the synthetic sponges seem like they would be pretty tight with pretty even pathways for the water. I guess since the water can get through at all then there must be different size pathways and perhaps they widen over time. Perhaps the most-used pathways get little tears in the sponge and widen even more. When I look at the seachem matrix rocks or biomax or seastars(?) I can also find myself wondering whether little easy pathways would be found by the water.

-waterdrop-
ps. Hey OohFeeshy, I have no idea what the abbreviation "SA" was for (??) (despite having some Portsmouth (Va,USA!) background,ha)

 

[CFC]

OK, followup #2 from above:

I want to followup on CFC's comment:

What are "Efi substrat pro" and "alphagrog?"

Are these other commercial attempts at increased bacterial substrate surface area like Seachem Matrix?

What are the pros and cons?

Thanks, -waterdrop-

Efi substrat pro is Eheims own brand bio media and is very good, it claims to have a surface area of 450 square meters per litre and process ammonia 4 times faster than sponges.

Alfagrog is pieces of volcanic rock which are highly pourous and so have a massive surface area, because it has larger piece sizes and comes in 15kg bags for a fairly cheap price it is an ideal media for using in sumps and pond filters where conventional aquarium media's would require hundreds of litres of product.

 

[rdd1952]

I do still use the Seachem Matrix along with the ceramic rings that came with my Fluval filters (been in filter almost 3 years now). Having the smaller media (Matrix) makes it easy when I need to pull a little from my filter to set up a Q-tank in my 5 gallon. Personally, I think that you need both sponges and ceramic rings (or another porous media such as Matrix) for mechanical and biological filtration respectively. It's true that the bacteria don't know what or where they are colonizing but once the tunneling effect begins in the sponges, theamount of sponge surface area that is actually seeing a significant water flow is reduced while the bacteria colonizing the rings still get pretty much a normal water flow and can process ammonia and nitrite.

Naturally, the sponges become clogged and need cleaning much more often as the water passes through the sponges first resulting in a quicker build up of debris. They are also much more difficult to clean as you really need to squeeze them out in dechlorinated water to fully remove all the gunk that is on/in them. Simply swishing them in water only removes surfae trash and not trash that has been pulled into the sponge. Doing so obviously causes a loss of bacteria. The more squeezing the more loss. The ceramic rings on the other hand, can usually be lightly rinsed to remove the trash resulting in little loss of bacteria.

 

[waterdrop]

Thanks RD and CFC,

I discovered this sentence at the Eheim site about Ehfi Substrat Pro:

"With over 450 ml per litre (22, 000sq. ft. per lmp. gal. / 18, 3000 sq. ft. per U.S. gal.) EHFISUBSTRAT is a specially designed sintered glass."

At the Seachem site, the Matrix information says:

"Each liter of Matrix™ provides over 160,000 cm2 (170 sq. ft.) of surface, equivalent to over 40 L (10 gallons) of typical plastic ball media!"

So...
Assuming Eheim has a typo of an extra zero in there...
[well, to tell you the truth I can't figure out whether the info is there to compare these two!]

It would be a nice if someone over the years had made a comparison table... of surface area claims or better yet of results of a controlled test but I assume that's a long shot.

-waterdrop-

 

[Chrispixx]

OK, followup#3 from above:

Thank you Chrispixx for replying about the media bags: what it made me realize is that the HOB styles don't usually have individual media baskets so the bag keeps the loose media together, whereas the cannister models usually have the baskets. Its as simple as that, isn't it?

Thats It. some filters do have extra media baskets where you could put loose bio-media in or carbon etc. but the aqua clear does not therefore needing the bag. A clean piece of panty hose works just as well.

Really, the plastic media baskets from the cannister filters must be easier to manage, right? You just lift it out, clamp your hand over it and shake it around underwater in a bucket of your just-removed aquarium water-change water. Because its not in a cloth bag, you can then see when it has been cleaned enough of debris, right?
-waterdrop-

Exactly.. easier to manage.

 

[Chrispixx]

Naturally, the sponges become clogged and need cleaning much more often.
1.They are also much more difficult to clean as you really need to squeeze them out in dechlorinated water to fully remove all the gunk that is on/in them.
2.Doing so obviously causes a loss of bacteria. The more squeezing the more loss. The ceramic rings on the other hand, can usually be lightly rinsed to remove the trash resulting in little loss of bacteria.

The two points in bold are exactly why i have two filters on each tank and alternate between cleaning the sponges.