I’m in the process of changing my Siporax media (changing the size, moving from the nano size Siporax to the larger rings) what’s the best way to do it? Do I need to mix the old with the new or is just have the new media in the tank enough to seed the new media?
Swapping media?
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That can come out instantly if you like. The rocks are enough to carry the whole tank when surrounding surface area is removed, be that filtration or the whole sandbed / sand rinse thread forty pages
there are a few rules in the hobby that are completely made up. The notion that live rocks aren’t enough in any reef tank and that we must remove surrounding surface area slowly isn’t correct, the nh3 carrying capacity of the system doesn’t change until live rock itself plus the side material has been removed. Of course no harm to wait, but new cycling rules give this type of action ability and its a major reason nobody loses tanks when they skip cycle for reef conventions.
the reason the hobby completely fabricated the notion is they had to have a context for .25 ammonia readings. (Take any action in reefing, api says your bacteria have suffered)
lol irony: the second rule upset in reefing is not one tank on any board ever hit and sustained .25...they're literally all misreads, every single post on google. And they said Wikipedia had unreliable data /
seneye and mindstream monitors ushered in this rule update, we weren’t guessing. While hooked to digital ammonia monitoring we ripped out several sandbeds in the work thread. Nh3 control always, by rule, stays the same until live rock is removed. And no reef hit tenths ppm nh3 even on day one of cycle, because they’d all inputted bottle bac that instantly went to work along with tank dilution.
this in hindsight is also benchmarked by bare bottom tanks, they carry as many fish as sand tanks. And not because more bacteria stacked on rocks (made up) the right amount of bacteria that already fits into live rock runs the tank, with or without extra surface area. To investigate this claim, for all forty pages we removed sandbeds all at once.
Matter of fact, the rings aren’t helping at all. They’re not reducing nitrate and the system handles nh3 without them.
siporax is helpful in heavy fish only setups where bioload outpaces common filter setups. To use them in a reef is neutral, it’s not harmful nor helpful. Like an ornament.
there are a few rules in the hobby that are completely made up. The notion that live rocks aren’t enough in any reef tank and that we must remove surrounding surface area slowly isn’t correct, the nh3 carrying capacity of the system doesn’t change until live rock itself plus the side material has been removed. Of course no harm to wait, but new cycling rules give this type of action ability and its a major reason nobody loses tanks when they skip cycle for reef conventions.
the reason the hobby completely fabricated the notion is they had to have a context for .25 ammonia readings. (Take any action in reefing, api says your bacteria have suffered)
lol irony: the second rule upset in reefing is not one tank on any board ever hit and sustained .25...they're literally all misreads, every single post on google. And they said Wikipedia had unreliable data /
seneye and mindstream monitors ushered in this rule update, we weren’t guessing. While hooked to digital ammonia monitoring we ripped out several sandbeds in the work thread. Nh3 control always, by rule, stays the same until live rock is removed. And no reef hit tenths ppm nh3 even on day one of cycle, because they’d all inputted bottle bac that instantly went to work along with tank dilution.
this in hindsight is also benchmarked by bare bottom tanks, they carry as many fish as sand tanks. And not because more bacteria stacked on rocks (made up) the right amount of bacteria that already fits into live rock runs the tank, with or without extra surface area. To investigate this claim, for all forty pages we removed sandbeds all at once.
Matter of fact, the rings aren’t helping at all. They’re not reducing nitrate and the system handles nh3 without them.
siporax is helpful in heavy fish only setups where bioload outpaces common filter setups. To use them in a reef is neutral, it’s not harmful nor helpful. Like an ornament.
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Reef.
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thanks, missed this post (not getting notifications of some threads?)
I’ve taken your advice, just finished putting the new media in, I was thinking it was keeping my nitrate down but seeing all the detritus in amongst it I am now not so sure, saw this post so removed it all in one go
My nitrate has been very stable at 12, I’ll post back to say how it goes.
the number one reason I like finding patterns in reef posts over the years regarding what filter bacteria do is because we can expand care and actionable boundaries from prior years
being able to rely on live rocks alone allows for rare quick CPR responses in reefs for things like broken tanks / making instant setups, handling rare contamination events where we swap stuff to save the whole system...even common home moves are a big deal as we undo the very consistency that matured the reef where it stood
its amazing how far the principle can be applied and I do use it myself to do all-at-once total system cleans every couple years vs weekly sand cleaning, it’s convenience in my case
when dealing with nitrate reducing media for sure a change out might increase nitrate for a while but we were mainly concerned with ammonia spikes since they’re lethal. Ammonia won’t spike due to lack of surface area, if it spikes it will be due to detritus waste getting cast around during removal work
being able to rely on live rocks alone allows for rare quick CPR responses in reefs for things like broken tanks / making instant setups, handling rare contamination events where we swap stuff to save the whole system...even common home moves are a big deal as we undo the very consistency that matured the reef where it stood
its amazing how far the principle can be applied and I do use it myself to do all-at-once total system cleans every couple years vs weekly sand cleaning, it’s convenience in my case
when dealing with nitrate reducing media for sure a change out might increase nitrate for a while but we were mainly concerned with ammonia spikes since they’re lethal. Ammonia won’t spike due to lack of surface area, if it spikes it will be due to detritus waste getting cast around during removal work
