Waterflow Over Biomedia

[soritan]

I'm curious about something... I know that water flow over your biomedia is important to keep your bacteria alive. But, how important is the rate at which the water flows over it?

For instance, if I put established biomedia into a brand new filter, and set the filter at its lowest setting... and, the rate at which the water flows over it, is lower than the rate which the bacteria was established in. Would there be significant die back? Or does it not actually matter, so long as there's water flow over it?

 

[rdd1952]

I'm just guessing at this but I would think that the flow rate isn't terribly important as long as you are turning the water often enough to keep it clean. I keep the flow on my betta tanks turned down to the minimum and that is nothing more than a trickle on a filter that is rated at 90 gph. The amount of bacteria that would die off would be more affect by the amount of ammonia that the fish produce. As I said though, that is just my guess as to how it works.

 

[Xtech]

The bacteria should not die off if the ammonia and nitrite levels are the same. A slower rate will just take longer to rid these toxicity levels. The important thing is that your filter is getting enough oxygenated water to keep the bacteria alive. I have a trickle filter which promotes anaerobic bacteria alive for my nitrate reduction. You want the opposite to occur in a nitrate filter.

 

[soritan]

Yes, that makes sense, and that's kinda what I figured as well. I just wasn't sure if a slower speed meant not enough aeration, or something. It does seem like there would be SOME die off, though, because the ammonia and nitrites are being delivered at too slow a rate to feed a big colony of bacteria.

I was wondering, mostly because I noticed that the biomedia for my Whisper 10i was far bigger than the biomedia for my Aquaclear 20. Also, I noticed that the biomedia for my Aquaclear 20, could fit into my Redsea Nano. It suddenly made me go all, "Say wha-?"

 

[guppymonkey]

The flow rate isn't as important as the oxygen levels. I guess that in most filters the flow rate really has to do with oxygen levels though. The faster the flow rate, the higher the oxygen levels.