Cheap biological filtration media?

[jim r]

Hi Stella, we are having an exec meeting on the 15 Nov if you can persuade someone heading back through Palmy I will gather lots of pumice for you and pass it on to the lucky person. :lol: Also remember if you boil pumice it will sink. (someone on the forum told me that)

[David R]

I used pumice for the sumberged media in my wet/dry, and bioballs for the above water stuff as I couldn't find anything like the 'pot scrubbers' the yanks rave about.

[Edczuch]

I have used Lava Rock, her we use it for our BBQ's and can purchase it quite cheap. I have also used it in my tanks for decoration.

[Captain Conkout]

for the win or alternately Mod=Warren: Implied Swearing removed - warning sent the world. All a matter of context... Online gamer nerd speak either way.

Pumice (I would imagine) would either lower,or at least neutralise the PH... depending on existing PH. And whatever the PH of pumice is... Go figure.

But I'd go pumice after comparing it's PH with your fishes tolerances...

Or alternately:-

Lots of pebbles

Course - fine foam padding

Driveway gravel

Plastic based pot scrubbers

Artificial moustaches (at least 50)

Many, many plastic pegs

Eheim Substrat Pro 2

Any ceramic noodle that *didn't* come with a Jebo product

All these would perform admirably.

[Warren]

Solid low surface area items like ceramic tiles and bio-balls are pretty useless compared to other much higher surface area media. Try reading the series of 4 articles about filtration starting here:

http://www.fnzas.org.nz/index.php?PG=filt1

Sometimes it's worth spending a few extra dollars on some of the ultra-high surface area synthetic media to get an effective surface area hundreds of times higher per litre. Pumice is by far one of the highest surface area free media sources available. It has some initial drawbacks but at least it's free.

[RixIce]

Dacron

[Silvia-15]

Dacron

thats mechanical not biological

[Ira]

If it comes first so it catches all the rubbish and is frequently replaced it's mechanical.

If it's after mechanical filtration so it doesn't clog up with rubbish and is left in it's biological.

[Warren]

I've never had any decent performance from dacron. It always clogs up before the bacterial colony has good time to establish. Doesn't seem to matter where in the filter it's put, it still eventually clogs up (even with a 15 micron pre-filter).

[Wok]

I'm in agreeance with Warren.

I avoid dacron, unless it is used in a box filter.

I would use sponges instead of dacron (filter wool)

[Captain Conkout]

I guess if you have ungodly flow dacron would be perfectly alright. It bricks quickly but gets the water nice and clear. More of a water polisher on the way out of the filter in my opinion.

The fine Jebo and Aqua One pads have more resistance to bricking and provide a similar polishing/high surface area filtration, they can usually get a few uses after being cleared out and when they clog they don't usually brick and shrink letting water around them.

Better all round....