hanslanda
Community Member
- Joined
- Nov 14, 2018
- Messages
- 50
- Reaction score
- 17
- What state or country do you live in
- Wisconsin
First-off, I'm no professional in this hobby. I've been doing this on and off for about 10 years with mostly FOWLR-salt. I've learned harsh lessons here and there lol. Today I will share one of these lessons, and back to my first point, if we feel this is due to my own lack of experience in the hobby.... by all means feel free to say it.
This lesson is around a certain product. Now I will say I watched a BRS video on this product, and my issue was actually mentioned in the video, but was told to potentially be solved.
Brightwell Aquatics XPORT NO3 plate.
Around November of last year I was starting this tank fresh. After reading reviews and watching a BRS review, I took the plunge. The third chamber of my sump, right after the air baffle, is built to direct water flow through two sections of this plate. Above that sits 1L of Seachem Matrix for redundancy and additional BIO.
Performance: 10/10 AMAZING. My tank was setup in November 20', within two months I had zero everything. Ammonia, nitrite, even nitrates.. Zilch, gone, nothing. I only water change 20% roughly once every 60 days. I do also run BRS Carbon ROX and GFO separately from this.
Maintenance: 1/10 Horrible. Now I read with these types of BIO you should at least take them out and rinse them in RO or clean saltwater to maybe get detritus and other debris cleaned up. It was explained on the order of 90 days. I did this about 180 days into it (I run very vigorous physical filters prior to the BIO chamber so it's less needed for me). After taking it out, I had some noticeable decomposition of the brick. Nothing super terrible, just some indenting where my fingers gripped. I cleaned it up got it back in the sump. Fast-forward to yesterday. I'm doing my 6 month rinse of the BIO... I didn't even get the brick out of the sump. I 3D printed little trays they sit on, so you don't have to grip them- they also sit in a baffle so it would be impossible to grip. Long story short they crumbled under their own weight literally as they came out of the sump. My sump is now a pasty pink non-sense. Thank god I did the Matrix or I would have just crashed my BIO in one day.
If you watch the BRS video on the product, he essentially says this happened with one of theirs and it was a huge PITA. BRS also stated they were testing another brick that appeared to be performing fine. So it was my risk.
Question is, where do I go from here? Is there a brick that people recommend (I've read of alumina issues)? I really enjoyed the performance of the thing and I kind of designed my sump around the brick shape.
This lesson is around a certain product. Now I will say I watched a BRS video on this product, and my issue was actually mentioned in the video, but was told to potentially be solved.
Brightwell Aquatics XPORT NO3 plate.
Around November of last year I was starting this tank fresh. After reading reviews and watching a BRS review, I took the plunge. The third chamber of my sump, right after the air baffle, is built to direct water flow through two sections of this plate. Above that sits 1L of Seachem Matrix for redundancy and additional BIO.
Performance: 10/10 AMAZING. My tank was setup in November 20', within two months I had zero everything. Ammonia, nitrite, even nitrates.. Zilch, gone, nothing. I only water change 20% roughly once every 60 days. I do also run BRS Carbon ROX and GFO separately from this.
Maintenance: 1/10 Horrible. Now I read with these types of BIO you should at least take them out and rinse them in RO or clean saltwater to maybe get detritus and other debris cleaned up. It was explained on the order of 90 days. I did this about 180 days into it (I run very vigorous physical filters prior to the BIO chamber so it's less needed for me). After taking it out, I had some noticeable decomposition of the brick. Nothing super terrible, just some indenting where my fingers gripped. I cleaned it up got it back in the sump. Fast-forward to yesterday. I'm doing my 6 month rinse of the BIO... I didn't even get the brick out of the sump. I 3D printed little trays they sit on, so you don't have to grip them- they also sit in a baffle so it would be impossible to grip. Long story short they crumbled under their own weight literally as they came out of the sump. My sump is now a pasty pink non-sense. Thank god I did the Matrix or I would have just crashed my BIO in one day.
If you watch the BRS video on the product, he essentially says this happened with one of theirs and it was a huge PITA. BRS also stated they were testing another brick that appeared to be performing fine. So it was my risk.
Question is, where do I go from here? Is there a brick that people recommend (I've read of alumina issues)? I really enjoyed the performance of the thing and I kind of designed my sump around the brick shape.
