Bioballs - How Much To Use

[nsomnia]

hey everyone, im setting up my new tank and jsut wanted to know how much bioballs i should use in my trickle setup, the local petstore sells them for $15 a gallon. there is about 300 gallons of water to be filtered. thanks

 

[afishdude]

How do they sell plastic bio-balls for $15 a gallon?

 

[Rooster]

The amount you need will depend on the size of your filter, surely ??


@afishdude - Selling media in "liquid" measures is quite common !!!

 

[OldMan47]

Just get enough balls for the space in the filter that you want to fill. I have almost stopped using the bioballs in favor of using ceramic media instead. The balls just look like too small a surface to be especially useful. The amount of water being filtered really does not matter in terms of biological filtration. What matters is how much bioload the filter is being asked to handle.

 

[nsomnia]

How do they sell plastic bio-balls for $15 a gallon?

1 gal bucket filled to the top, thats how most of them are sold.

im going to be running my pair of fluval 405s with the balls for the first while

 

[nsomnia]

Just get enough balls for the space in the filter that you want to fill. I have almost stopped using the bioballs in favor of using ceramic media instead. The balls just look like too small a surface to be especially useful. The amount of water being filtered really does not matter in terms of biological filtration. What matters is how much bioload the filter is being asked to handle.

i built a trickle tank that would be capable of holding about 20 gallons ( guess i never mentioned it was for trickle.. sorry ) but just looking for an idea on what others have used, i also noticed that the local hardware store sells hagen biomax for a fraction of what the pet stores sell it for, you figure that stuff works better?

 

[OldMan47]

If it is selling for a small fraction of the price you might actually be able to afford the stuff. I am guessing that a volume of 20gallons for a wet / dry would still cost a small fortune to fill though.