Bio Balls, is this really why???

[boozeman]

Originally Posted by BrothaWolf

Woodstock is right you must always wash your balls gently otherwise they wont work properly. You will have to start a whole new cycle and rebuild all that bacteria. My g/f took my balls. Her cat plays with them. BUT if I had balls I wouldnt wash them at all. Better to have dirty balls than no balls. You could cause your system to crash!

bwah ha ha !!!!

[burning2nd]

im sold...

Im gonna go get some bio balls.... just cause

[lgerold]

I wonder if without bioballs, the crud must therefore be deposited on the live rock, sand, etc, closest to the denitrifying factory. Bioballs oxygenize the water so well, that the nitrates developing in the crud have no chance of being denitrified, once it's stuck there.

I've got a sheet of filter material positioned just below the flow into the sump, to catch any matter that it can. I change it out or rinse it well every other day or so.

[KMP]

i haven't washed my balls since i got 'em.

[KMP]

i've never washed my balls.

[sasquatch]

May I present the Bioballkoozi

[KMP]

ok, kidding aside, this was an interesting thread. i've always wondered why all the companies include them w/all in one tanks if they were so bad. now i know different.

[Woodstock]

They are great for fish only systems that need to convert large amounts of ammonia quickly but I would never use them in my reef.

[sasquatch]

so Im still looking for an answer,what state, chemical or compound is floating around in the watercolumn that bioballs convert that lr cannot, I mean what is this stuff doing while waiting its turn at the LR factory?. Steve

[KodiakBear]

Originally Posted by cheeks69

Maybe this article can be of some help:

Nitrate in the Reef Aquarium

Cheeks, thanks for the link, it was really informative. This is a small excerpt from the site that was helpful to me in deciding to remove the bioballs from my system:

5. Remove existing filters designed to facilitate the nitrogen cycle. Such filters do a fine job of processing ammonia to nitrite to nitrate, but do nothing with the nitrate. It is often non-intuitive to many aquarists, but removing such a filter altogether may actually help reduce nitrate. So slowly removing them and allowing more of the nitrogen processing to take place on and in the live rock and sand can be beneficial.

It is not that any less nitrate is produced when such a filter is removed, it is a question of what happens to the nitrate after it is produced.

When it is produced on the surface of media such as bioballs, it mixes into the entire water column, and then has to find its way, by diffusion, to the places where it may be reduced (inside of live rock and sand, for instance).

If it is produced on the surface of live rock or sand, then the local concentration of nitrate is higher there than in the first case above, and it is more likely to diffuse into the rock and sand to be reduced to N2.

Here's another excerpt that I don't fully understand. Would activated carbon filters work to do what this describes?

6. Use a carbon-driven denitrator. There are a variety of different commercial systems available, none of which are especially popular in the United States at this time. However, they can do a good job of removing nitrate and some aquarists quite like them.

In one of these types of systems, a carbon source is added to a portion of tank water in a low oxygen environment. In many cases, the carbon source is methanol. The methanol is mixed with aquarium water in a controlled situation (such as fluid pumped through a coil) and the methanol is consumed by bacteria that use nitrate as an electron acceptor instead of oxygen:

12 NO3- + 10 CH3OH + 12 H+ à 10 CO2 + 6 N2 + 26 H2O

The end result is that nitrate is removed from the aquarium. The typical drawback to such a system is the need for careful control over the conditions, and the consequent complexity that often accompanies such a reactor.

[Snelly40]

Originally Posted by BrothaWolf

My g/f took my balls.!

hahahahaha, yeah she told me you had no balls, just playing, i think they do that to all of us

[prow]

Originally Posted by sasquatch

so Im still looking for an answer,what state, chemical or compound is floating around in the watercolumn that bioballs convert that lr cannot, I mean what is this stuff doing while waiting its turn at the LR factory?. Steve

i think your talking about breaking up nitrates, right? there are many answers. dont forget there is more than one way to convert things. you have the sulfer cycles, carbon cycles, oxygen cycles, phosphorus cycles, iron cycles, mercury cycles ect....there is no simple answer, for example in iron cycles reactions take place spontaneously in oxic environments aswell as in anoxic environments. this is ture in the sulfer cycle aswell. way too much to go into. after understanding one cycle learn another than another and so, after awhile you start see the dynamics and how they interplay with eachother in the big picture. you know this plus that equals this unless this is happening then it equals that. there are many ways you can get the same answer. its a battle of who gets that O2 or N or whatever one group grows faster at times than others (and slower).

[sasquatch]

In one of these types of systems, a carbon source is added to a portion of tank water in a low oxygen environment. In many cases, the carbon source is methanol. The methanol is mixed with aquarium water in a controlled situation (such as fluid pumped through a coil) and the methanol is consumed by bacteria that use nitrate as an electron acceptor instead of oxygen:
An excellent theory that has seen more people banned from sites than any other I can think of, the problem being the "controlled situation" a few drops too many and its tank crash city.
Thanks Prow! thats a bit closer to where I was trying to get. Steve

[lcstorc]

Well I'm a bit short on the science part of this debate but can share a personal experience.
When we first set up out tank we set it up with the bio-balls and LR. Nitrates for the first 4 months of the system were off the chart. No amonia, no nitrite after the initial cycle but no matter how many water changes we did the nitrates were still sky high.
Woodstock suggested that the bio-balls were part of the problem and advised me to remove them slowly so I did. Since about a week after the last of the bio-balls were removed I have not seen nitrates over 10 in my system.
Sorry I can't explain the science of it, but I know it worked for me.

[Witfull]

Originally Posted by lcstorc

balls were part of the problem and advised me to remove them slowly

/me shivers,,,,slow removal is even worse,,,ever slowly take a band-aid off? run men,,,RUN!!!

look forward to a new photo contest,,,,,,who has the cleanest balls~