Is more always better?

[ShadowMac]

Hello everyone. I would like your opinion on adding an additional filter to my 48 gallon 90P. I currently have an eheim pro 3 2075 rated at 330 gph running with a lily pipe outflow. To improve the spread of flow I have added a small pump at the rear with a short spray bar for a gentle surface ripple and wide spread of flow which compliments the lily pipe well.

I have a 2217 just sitting around and could easily put this on the tank. I thought I would run a long spray bar along the majority of the back panel from this and remove the small pump. The small pump is rated at 104 gph. the 2217 is 260 gph.

Is more better? Would it be beneficial or would it not really matter?

Opinions, please.

 

[Biollante]

1st A Word From Our Sponsor*; More CO2 Only Increased CO2 Can Solve Any Problem.

Hi Shawn,

More is not necessarily better… (unless it is CO[SUB]2[/SUB][SUP]*[/SUP])

Having said that additional filtration can allow heavier critter loads.

In many cases biological filtration capacity can be increased by increasing dissolved oxygen.

Biollante
*This post brought to you by the Military-Industrial-CO[SUB]2[/SUB] Complex

 

[ShadowMac]

so, by improving gas exchange at the surface, turning up CO2 and providing more surface area for filtration bacteria only good things can happen

I threw on on the spray bar that spans the length of the rear of the tank with the filter. couldn't hurt... Part of me regrets not going wet/dry,however they just make me nervous. I actually was thinking that O2 improvements could be a great benefit to this system. The fish appear to be thanking me and are LOVING the flow and probably a wonderful gill full of O2. They are very active.

I increased CO2 slightly to compensate for increased rippling. I am home today, so will be observing closely.

 

[Biollante]

C:N

Hi Shawn,

The CO[SUB]2[/SUB] is more to give the plants highest efficiency AND keep the pH down a bit. The plants are really the first and in my ever-humble-potted-plant opinion, best line of filtration, themselves and home for other biologic filtration.

Lowering pH is a balancing act when it comes to overall biological filtration, if we have pressurized CO[SUB]2[/SUB] it is relatively easy to keep the pH in the 6.2- 6.5 range our bacteria do pretty well down to pH 5.8 or so.

Nitrification by heterotrophic creatures seems to be highest (for our purposes I will say, most efficient) based on my observation, in the pH 7.5 range at 26⁰ C, much of the literature places the pH range higher, I think this is a difference between aquarium conditions and the real world.

I have observed in moderately to heavily planted tanks as much of 70% of the soluble organic material by cleaning, water changes, and uptake by plants and to a lesser extent abiotic means, mainly ionic, in our aquariums, while closed loop systems account for the rest. In open systems, the distribution of waste disposal is more evenly distributed. With somewhat, to my surprise, mature deep sand bed (DSB) tanks preforming with incredible efficiency.:chuncky:

I will get back to the soluble organic material in a moment; this becomes what is generally referred to as dissolved organic carbon (DOC) or sometimes carbonaceous biochemical oxygen demand (CBOD), particularly when concern for or calculation of available oxygen is critical.

Since the processes that favor plant uptake are acidic, we prefer the un-ionized/ionized (NH3/ NH[SUB]4[/SUB][SUP]+[/SUP]) ratio of ammonia-nitrogen to favor ionized (NH[SUB]4[/SUB][SUP]+[/SUP]) ammonia-nitrogen since it is generally non-toxic and readily available to plants.

It appears to me the pH 6.4 range is a good tradeoff between the ammonia-nitrogen ratio and the various heterotrophs involved.

Keeping the dissolved oxygen levels up are important to increasing the efficiency of our preferred heterotrophs, of course this includes our critters (people are heterotrophs) and our heterotrophic bacteria and fungus that actually break down organic material and either sequester it, mineralize it or dissolve it.

Had I an education I might have known this, so if the readers already understood this, please bear with me.

{I had a Shimadzu TOC-V ws I refurbished to track dissolved organic material and rely primarily on the nitrapyrin (with DSMO) method for gross nitrification. The nitrapyrin method provides comparisons of various filter media and substrates, correlated (as possible) with ORP, DO, bug counts, gross weights and so forth.}

I had always assumed that increasing DOC simply overwhelmed the biological filtration systems of our tanks. After having looked at this a while, it is clear that substantial (definition depends on circumstances) increases in DOC actually inhibit our biological processes and in many ways have a net effect of crippling our biological filtration and in particular on nitrification.

The how’s and why fore’s are I think interesting but beyond my meager mental abilities. My understanding based on my reading is that there is an organic Carbon to Nitrogen ratio and what I typically refer to as restarting or triggering another “Nitrogen cycle” is probably close enough for our purposes. (1-gram NH[SUB]3[/SUB] ≈ 0.82-gram NH[SUB]3[/SUB] – N and 1-gram NH[SUB]4[/SUB][SUP]+[/SUP] ≈ 0.78-gram NH[SUB]4[/SUB][SUP]+[/SUP]-N)

The other portion of this is the available oxygen since it is something like 9-parts oxygen to convert 2 parts NH[SUB]4[/SUB][SUP]+[/SUP] to NO[SUB]3[/SUB][SUP]-[/SUP].

More later if there is any interest, I am never sure...

Biollante

 

[Orion]

Well say you are Biollante you are sharing a great information with me and every body i like your post and i get increase my knowledge after read out all your post.
Thanks for sharing.