Fluidized sand bed filters

[Gigaah]

Anyone have any real information on them. Concept sounds plausable. While from what I gather probably not as good as an algae scrubber in many respects but they seem dead simple. Want to know what anyones experience or knowledge is on these devices.

[scrubbingback]

There a bit like a the next step in efficiency from bio-balls so will produce NO3 way too quickly for a tank to cope with really... Not a big fan. Suppose there ok on heavily stocked fish systems.

[dota]

what..?! fluidized sand bed make NO3..? seriously? :o then, i hv to get rid of it

[tomservo]

Not really what you want on a reef, but they are pretty much sovereign on big fish-only systems, especially freshwater. A pool filter sized one can easily handle 120,000 liters. (that's about dishwasher sized).

[joelespinoza]

They work great for what they do, they are just limited. They provide an amazing amount of aerobic biological filtration, so they can quickly convert ammonia to nitrite then to nitrate, quickly reducing toxic nitrogenous waste products to much less toxic ones. However they have no anerobic biological filtration, so while they dont produce nitrates, they also dont remove them like a scrubber does.

This works great in heavily stocked tanks that are prone to big spikes in ammonia (IE if you feed a heavily stocked tank large amounts once a day). These can be ok if the livestock is all vertebrate based (fish) that can safely handle higher concentrations of nitrates in the water. This allows you to let the nitrates build up to reasonably high levels then do large water changes.

They can also work pretty well when combined with deep sand beds in large heavily stocked systems.