Equipment & Supplies • Bio Ball vs Ceramic Rings

[DeViANtX]

Bio Ball vs Ceramic Rings? Which do you recommend?

[CichlidAndrew]

Bioballs have a ton more surface area. Coralife bioballs have 13 sq. in of surface area on one alone. This all means more area for growth.

[AquaTester55]

Use the bio balls that can mesh together, otherwise you are not utilizing all the space available.

[DeViANtX]

is it going to be a problem when I remove all my ceramic rings and switch over to bio balls?

[nimboman]

Mix them- I use regular bioballs with chemstars and blocks of cell pore. When switching out biomedia keep some of the ceramic rings so that the bacteria can transfer to the bioballs.

[MightyM]

Bio Ball vs Ceramic Rings? Which do you recommend?

what filter? its like apples and oranges they are both excellent in certain setups. bioballs are best known to use in wet dry sump and ceramic rings in canister.

[tekjunky]

Hello...i would use pot scrubbies over bio-balls or the rings. The pot scrubbies offer more surface growth than both of them and are cheaper.

http://www.wernersponds.com/biofiltermedia.htm

Just my 2 cents

Tekjunky

[edouthirt]

is it going to be a problem when I remove all my ceramic rings and switch over to bio balls?

Let me ask a question. Is your current filtration not able to handle your bio-load?

If everything is working fine then don't change a thing. (if it ain't broke, don't fix it) However, since you're asking, I'm assuming that everything is not fine or that you are about to increase your stock significantly and are worried about your potential bio-load...

my personal opinion is that if you are worried about bio-load... get another filter, and use whatever you want.... bio-balls, ceramic rings, pot scrubbers, leggos, those tiny army men figurines...

Or if you have room in your current filter... add additional bio-media to it (bio-balls if you want some variety)

I would not suggest removing any of the ceramic rings that you currently have.

Warning: I have never used leggos or tiny army men, nor have I ever heard of anybody seriously using them (I have heard people bring up the possibility)... but as long as they don't leach out chemicals or harmful substances into the water (which I'm not sure if can figure that out) I don't see why they wouldn't work.

[kingdave]

I tend to agree with edouthirt on this topic. If there is nothing wrong with the ceramic rings, then why replace them? Adding a different type of media, like bio balls elsewhere in the system would be the way to go if you are looking to increase the bio filtering capacity overall.

[Windsor]

I never thought of using pot scrubbies. Interesting. They may do well as your first layer of mechanical filtration.

For bio filtration, I do like the bio-balls, whichever flavor you like. They have lots of surface area, but at the same time are very "open" and don't tend to restrict water flow too much.

[aritg3]

Can bio balls go into a Eheim canister filter (eg. the 2213 or 2026?)?

[dreday]

in my sump i have bioballs, ceramic rings for canisters, and those luffa sponges for the shower. the plastic ones. i got 3 for a 1$ and i squeezed 6 in into the compartment. so now it is completely full.


the bioballs would have cost around 30$ to fill up the compartment. the rings around 50+. thats why i added the luffas, cause i only spent 10$ on each of the others and was sadly disappointed at how much space they took up.

if you have extra space in a sump then i say luffas or pot scrubbies (plastic on both). also i like the luffas cuase when i need to seed a new tank i just pull one out and shove it into new filter or leave it in tank.