Taking out Bio Balls- Bad Idea?

[Bells>Waimea]

Have a 20 Gal AIO that's been up and running for 2 months. Cycled in 3 weeks.

Added 2 stacks of marine pure bio balls (about 12-15 in each of the 2 back chambers) because I don't have all that much rock (dry) in my display. Running chemipure blue, filter pads, and the bio balls.

I'm swapping out one of the chambers to add a little fuge for the many benefits it provides.

Think I should take out the stack in segments over the course of a week or so, or think I'll be alright taking out a full stack at one time and leaving the other one in place? I'd try to keep as many of the balls in the tank as possible, but will definitely have to remove a lot of them to make room.

Have some coral and a lil clown goby in it currently.

thanks in advance!

 

[MERKEY]

From the research I've done (and I'm not the best at that) I would say the live rock in your tank has enough bac on it for you to swap ot all out at once.

However the safe side of me says to do it in segmants so you dont run into any problems.

Your tank is still really new so I think going either way you will be ok.

What corals do you have?

They can be picky so try to keep the parameters stable....by the way what are the parameters?

 

[Bells>Waimea]

Yeah it's new. That's why I'm a little concerned about how to go about it.

Parameters are stable
Sal- 35
alk- 8.7
Cal- ?
Mag- ?
no3 - 5-10
phos- .06
trite-0
ammonia- 0

Some zoas, blasto merletti, acan, gorgs, tiny lil forest fire digi, and a lil lepto. Everything is happy. Was doing bi-weekly 25% changes, but have diatoms, so I'm doing weekly 10-15% changes now.

Normally, I'd just take it slow, but I didn't think about it when I ordered the chaeto and it arrives tomorrow.

I guess I could just put the chaeto in the fuge basket to keep it in place and put it in the display for a few days while I slowly swapped out the bio balls, but don't really know if that's necessary.

Maybe even just put the chaeto ball in a net and float it in the tank for a few days. Idk.

Only reason I'm concerned is in the past my roommate thought he was doing me a favor and took out the sponge in the aqua clear filter and washed it with freshwater, essentially eliminating a huge bio colony and causing an ammonia spike and crash. And this was with LIVE rock, and not dry rock like i have now.

 

[Dj City]

Why do you want to remove the bio balls for a mini fuge?
You will do better with the bio balls you currently have than what you can achieve with a mini fuge.

You won't get the benefits of a fuge that's too small.

 

[siggy]

Why do you want to remove the bio balls for a mini fuge?
You will do better with the bio balls you currently have than what you can achieve with a mini fuge.

You won't get the benefits of a fuge that's too small.

I agree, I used the same Marine pur in my 75 (good stuff) I started a fuge and ended up stripping the tank of all nutrients
to the point I had to start buying it to put it back in. I then removed the MP and seen a Phosphate spike and had to add gfo which caused the chaeto to have problems........I removed the fuge and went back to marine pure.
In the end I removed half of the live rock and was still near zero nutrients. the stuff works

Long story long, Refuges are a tool to be used when needed, and requires lots of attention and supplements to stay healthy or they start to pollute the tank. It is an approach at reefing and I say a hobby itself. Best of Luck

 

[Tuan’s Reef]

I have a mini fuge on my nano 20g and it’s growing chaeto like crazy so I have to think it’s consuming my nutrients . I actually want to sell a small batch lol

btw I took out my marine pure bio balls so I could install my fuge . My PH never dips below 8.0 now which is why I wanted to switch

 

[Bells>Waimea]

This is one of the reasons why I'm adding it. I know it's small and won't suck up all the nutrients, but It'll help with Ph stability. Microfauna, bio diversity etc. Some help with nutrients is fine, but doing one simple 4 gallon (25%) water change helps a ton with high nutrients.

I'll still have 15 or so bio balls in the back anyway since I'm not running a skimmer or reactor.

 

[brandon429]

Bioballs are designed to handle ammonia, the only param they have action on

Cycled rock already handles ammonia for the whole system even if you remove bioballs


BB are simply extra surface area and if you remove some or all, or add more, no measure of ammonia changes. They're an option, just exactly like deciding to hook up three extra canister filters to a reef. You can do that, but your ammonia is the same after cycling whether you added or removed them or hooked up six more filters inline then instantly removed them one day.