Question about Biological Filtration

[mike]

I have 2 questions.

1. I'll be flooding my 125G tank late August early September. My intention was to run my Fluval FX5 on my established 33G tank (of course I'll dial is down a bit). I was going to have only the foam filters and ceramic rings in all the baskets of the FX5 which will result in more than double the biological filtration than I currently have in the 33G. My concern is, once I remove the FX5 from the 33G tank will this cause the tank to go through a mini cycle because more than 50% of the biological filtration will be removed?

2. My 125G tank will have a sump which will be a 20G tank, I expect there to be about 16G of water in the sump and there will be 3 chambers. The first one will be for the drain, the second will have bio media (either ceramic rings or volcanic rock) and the third will have the heater and return pumps. The total circulation provided by the circulation pumps will be about 1500GPH. This will be almost 100x the capacity of the sump tank, will this amount of flow hinder the effectiveness of the biological filtration? In other words will the flow be too fast through the media for any significant amount of biological filtration to be established?

Thank you in advance.

Mike

 

[Yo-han]

Don't know the rules about linking to another forum, but I'm translating a Dutch website with a lot of information about biological filtration. The original site in Dutch is:

http://members.multimania.nl/brieneoord/aqua/

I've translated a few pages already here:

http://www.aquaticplantcentral.com/...1-biological-filtration-translated-dutch.html

(If this is against the rules, feel free to remove the link above, or I can post the translations on this forum as well if people are interested...)

I think this is some very useful information for you!

 

[mike]

Excellent information

Thank you very much for the information. I was a very good read and quite helpful.

There is still the question of how my 33G will react to the change in the biological filtration. I'll wait for an answer on that one or eventaully find out.

Thanks again,

Mike

 

[Yo-han]

I think that if your filter has enough capacity to run your 33G it will quickly take over, no problem. Would be just like cleaning your filter, you loose half the bacteria but there is still enough to take over quick. Would be stable in 24 hour I assume.