Too Much biological filtration

[Barnabie Mejia]

I was thinking about this on the way to work this morning.... I am starting up a 75g DT with a 20L sump. I am moving things over from a 29g and I have already placed 1 gallon of marine pure spheres in the 29 to jump start the bio filter. I don't know if this was the right thing to do? when I fill the 75g I will transfer the spheres over to the sump and maybe a rock or two from the 29g. I will only have about 45lbs of CaribSea Life rock in the DT with no more than an inch of special grade sand. I will be using seachem stability and microbacter7 for the start up.

don't mean to hijack but I had these same questions this morning and this thread reminded me....

 

[Pntbll687]

im setting u a new tank soon and i was wondering if there is such a thing as too much biological filtration. like would i benefit from a refugium,liverock,and marinepure biospheres or is it just overkill.

I'm going to go against the grain and say YES you can have too much biological filtration.

Now let me clarify...

I think you can have too much media that won't do much because you have more media than bioload in the tank. You could have a 20g tank and a marine pure block in the sump, but I highly doubt you'll be using all of the surface area of the media.

I used seachem matrix and ran into it trapping detritus more than providing filtration.

I would start light, maybe one or two marine pure spheres when initially stocking the tank. Then as you add fish add more media if needed.

 

[NS Mike D]

biological filtration is self regulating.

I'm going to go against the grain and say YES you can have too much biological filtration.

Now let me clarify...

I think you can have too much media that won't do much because you have more media than bioload in the tank. You could have a 20g tank and a marine pure block in the sump, but I highly doubt you'll be using all of the surface area of the media.

I used seachem matrix and ran into it trapping detritus more than providing filtration.

I would start light, maybe one or two marine pure spheres when initially stocking the tank. Then as you add fish add more media if needed.

good points.


A reefer I respect uses marine pure blocks in his sump and limits rock to only what he needs to anchor corals. The reason is that he believes that over time rock will eventually clog up (like you describe with your seachem matrix experience) and lose it's biological filtration abilities eventually resulting in problems down the road. He puts a few marine pure blocks in his sump and replaces them one at a time over time.


Doing so also opens up his DT so that it gets better flow throughout the DT. Based on his success I have removed about 40% of my DT rock and rely on rubble rock (to eventually be swapped out by marine pure blocks) in my sump.

If I had to do it all over I would go with no sand, very little live rock in the DT and a program to systematically swap out the biological filter media as it clogs over time.


and yes, you can have too much biological filtration, which is not a bad thing since biological filtration is self regulating. Better to have too much than not enough, so long is it's not live rock in the DT that is serving as a place for algae to call home.