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Bio balls out??

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by bladerunner, Feb 7, 2012.

  1. bladerunner

    bladerunner Well-Known ReefKeeper

    In my sump right now I am using Bio Balls. How would I go about removing the bio balls without hurting my tank? My tank has been set up for 4 or 5 months now and I'm keeping all my corals and fish alive.
     
    bladerunner, Feb 7, 2012
    #1
  2. BigB

    BigB Well-Known ReefKeeper

    When I removed mine I took out about 1/3 at a time at a week apart with no problems..
     
    BigB, Feb 8, 2012
    #2
  3. Bud

    Bud Loves Bacon Website Team Board of Directors Leadership Team GIRS Member Vendor

    What filtration are you replacing the bio-balls with?
     
    Bud, Feb 8, 2012
    #3
  4. bladerunner

    bladerunner Well-Known ReefKeeper

    I'm already using a protein skimmer, algae scrubber, and small refugium, but I was going to replace the bio balls with a micron sock.
     
    bladerunner, Feb 8, 2012
    #4
  5. Bud

    Bud Loves Bacon Website Team Board of Directors Leadership Team GIRS Member Vendor

    If your algae scrubber is fully cured, that is running for about 4-6 weeks and producing good algae, and your N and P are low, you probably could just pull all the bio-balls. The tank I run a scrubber on went a week with no filtration until I got done re-building the scrubber, and there were no problems. Also when I switched to the scrubber I removed all other filtration (socks and skimmer) as I had no choice and there were no problems. Although it's not going to hurt to remove half now and half in a week or so either. The only reason you would want to do that is to avoid shocking the system. It depends on other factors as well, mainly the long-term stability of the system. If you have a lot of established live rock and a well built scrubber, pulling the bio-balls all at once will not likely affect the system, as the scrubber will absorb any N and ammonia that the now partially removed bacterial colony used to take care of, and the live rock will still have a large filtration component.

    The safe route though would be to remove the bio-balls in stages over 2 or 3 weeks.
     
    Bud, Feb 8, 2012
    #5
  6. fewbert

    fewbert Inactive User

    when u say scrubbers what are u talking about? for us newbeies
     
    fewbert, Feb 9, 2012
    #6
  7. Tholton33

    Tholton33 Well-Known ReefKeeper

    algae turf scrubbers. basically you grow thick algae to use as nutrient export
     
    Tholton33, Feb 9, 2012
    #7

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