BIOHOME FILTER MEDIA - QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

Hello there, I'm Richard from Tyne Valley Aquatics and also the Pond Guru channel on YouTube. In this video, I'm going to run through all the different types of bio home filter media that are available and also answer a few of the questions that I regularly get asked, hopefully to make this a very informative video on filter media. First question I get asked is what is bio home filter media? That's it there, that's just a few bits picked at random. This media is sintered glass as opposed to ceramic. It might sound fancy but at the end of the day all it is is sand which has been carefully selected plus some other things formed into certain size sticks or balls and treated in a kiln to harden it. The fact that it's made of sand and sand in itself is made of spherical shapes Means that that leads to a very, very big surface area in a small space, which is exactly what you want in a filter, any filter. You've only got a certain size space to work with, so you need media with as big a surface area as possible in there. That's going to do all of your biological filtration. There's lots of other medias also have a very large surface area, but the bio home strikes the balance between having a really massive surface area and also making that surface area available for instance carbon has a unbelievably huge surface area tiny little passageways running through it but because those little passages get so blocked you've got to throw it away every seven to eight weeks so it's no good as a biological filtration media it's basically used to absorb The bio home media supports bacteria. and it supports it extremely well. Here's an example of one type of bio home versus another quite popular type of media to show just how available that surface area is. Again just dipping the tip of it in. Oh yes, I would say that's pretty porous. So that's porous, it's got a massive surface area and it's got the trace elements. And now I'm going to have to wash my hands. I'll just dunk it in, see if that makes a difference. Yeah, I think it's going up, but not very quickly. You can have as much surface area as is physically possible, but if that surface area isn't available or gets blocked extremely quickly, you might as well have your media down on your drive as gravel. BioHome Media is suitable for freshwater and marine. I personally don't know much if anything about marine systems but it's very good for marine filtration judging by the amount of people who own marine systems who I sell this to and also the feedback that I'm getting about it as well. It performs very well indeed. Now I'm going to very quickly run through the different types of the BioHome media in the chronological order that they were invented and marketed. This one here is the standard BioHome. So the BioHome standard was the first one, typically in little sticks of varying lengths and it can be snapped to size, so say you have a very small area, maybe it's in one of your hang on the back filters or an internal filter that's only got a very small space for biological media, all you do is snap that to size. And this one's good for overhead filters, hang on the back filters, small externals, and small internals. It'll work in more or less any filter, but they are its primary best uses. This one is BioHome Plus. The next one, the Plus version, is exactly the same as the ordinary BioHome standard, but it has added trace elements. And what those elements do, apart from turning it a nice orangey-red colour, is they provide trace elements for bacteria and this ensures that bacteria sets up on this media extremely quickly and it maintains the health of the bacterial colony for longer. Exactly the same uses as the BioHome standard and as the standard this one can be snapped to length. This is BioHome Ultra. This is the biggest of the BioHome range, this one BioHome Ultra. This one has a more open pore structure it's not quite as dense. As the BioHome and the BioHome Plus. So this one for its size is proportionally lighter. Therefore, it takes up more space per kilo. With this one, the inner structure is a little bit more dense than the outer structure. And what that does, it supports a lot of anaerobic bacteria. So the outer edges get colonized with aerobic bacteria, as most filter media does. The internal structure gets colonized with anaerobic bacteria. All of Biohome media supports aerobic and anaerobic bacteria, which is very important. Aerobic bacteria consume ammonia and nitrite, but they produce nitrate. So in a normal filter, you'd get your ammonia and nitrite very well processed, but you'd get nitrates being produced. The anaerobic bacteria consume nitrate, and what that means is... You'll need to do less water changes and the amount of water that you need to change can also be reduced which means a more healthy, stable environment. And when you're keeping things in a small container, i.e. a tank, stability is what you're after. The Biohome Ultra, with it being much bigger, is more suited to either very big external filters, sumps, shower filters or trickle towers. It's been used for years in the Far East for koi. and also arowana farmers, so that is really one for the bigger filters. Now one type of bio home media that's different to the rest is Biomotion. This one is Biomotion. It's made of the same stuff but it's made with a different structure to enable it to be used in moving bed filters. Now this white stuff on the outside of Biomotion is monolite clay. And that's added as a water conditioner. It does eventually wear off, but it helps to condition the water, make the water healthy. And although this media is more or less for moving bed filters, it can also be used in external filters as well. Now from a maintenance point of view, in a filter it's best if you have this under foam. So you have all your foams, say in an external filter, filtering out mechanically. Then you'd have your biological media, the Biomotion. Then you'd have another piece of foam. You wouldn't need that with all the other types, but with this it'll stop it floating away when you take the top off because it is buoyant. So for years they were the only sorts of bio home media that were produced and then I actually said to the manufacturer I would like that open pore structure of bio home ultra but in a smaller pellet making it more suitable. for most external filters and also overhead filters basically smaller situations that the ultra was a little bit too big to fit into so that resulted in BioHome Mini Ultra, this one's BioHome Mini Ultra now as this was made to my specs I kind of got exactly what I wanted I wanted something with an open pore structure but with a slightly denser core to support both aerobic and anaerobic bacteria so the full Filtering job gets done in this little pellet. It really does have a wide range of uses. It can be used pretty much anywhere. And again, like the smaller ones, it can be snapped up to fit in quite small spaces. The very last media is pretty much the pinnacle of the BioHome range. It's exactly the same as the BioHome Mini Ultra, but it has the added trace elements from the BioHome Plus. This one is BioHome Ultimate. So you've got the benefits of the Mini Ultra, but you've also got the added benefits of the BioHome Plus. So you've got a very open pore structure, externally, internally, a little bit more dense. You've got both sets of bacteria colonizing this, and you've got the trace elements to support them and encourage them. Here's a quick example of what I mean. I mean, this isn't a definitive way to tell, but when I snap this in half, you can see the color difference inside. That's a result of the firing but it's also a result of the inner core of it being slightly more dense. It's the same structure as the Mini Ultra but with this one being coloured by the additives you can see that a little bit more easily, it demonstrates it a bit better. Damn it, I've only remembered this now that I'm back home and it's one of the most important things about filtration. I've spent the last few minutes talking about bacteria, providing a home for bacteria, and how good the bio home media is for providing a home for that bacteria, but I haven't actually talked about the bacteria itself. Now, as you know, bacteria is all around us. When you put the media in your filter, even if it's a new tank, tap water, there's still gonna be bacteria in there. When you start and introduce fish, they'll produce waste, which in turn will feed bacteria. The bacteria will be present in that fish's waste, but you can get a bit of a head start, especially in a new system. Now, these are the things that I supply with all the media that I sell. They're basically polymer gel balls with live bacteria in and these balls provide nourishment for the bacteria for the life of those balls which is approximately 18 months or so. All you've got to do is drop these into your filter where the media goes and over the period of probably one to two weeks depending on the amount of ammonia in the water these will slowly dissolve and release live bacteria onto the media. That'll help to set the filter up very quickly with live bacteria. With a lot of the bottled treatments, it's an anaerobic condition in there. There's nothing to nourish the bacteria, and the chances are 99.99% of it is dead. You've always got that tiny little percent that's alive, and bacteria does grow pretty quick if it's got somewhere good to grow on. But with this, you know the bacteria's alive, you put it in, it spreads out very well. You can buy these separately as well, so, you know, don't feel compelled to buy media just to get these, you can buy these online, and they are the best form of bacteria, certainly that I've found, and from the feedback I get off people, other people seem to think so as well. Now the bacteria that's in those gel balls is specific to freshwater systems, it's a different sort of bacteria that lives in saltwater systems, although I don't know much about marine, I do know that. Because I phoned up the people that make the gel balls. I didn't know up to that point. So the balls that I supply with the media are only for fresh water use. You can buy marine gel balls to set up the media in marine systems. One thing I do notice when I'm looking on forums and so on, looking out basically for people who've used bio home media and are giving it good feedback. He's back. Everybody who uses it gives a good feedback. There's been a few people saying, it hasn't had any reviews, why haven't I seen this before? Well, it's quite a new product to the UK. Although the company that manufactures it has been manufacturing it for years, 99% of the stuff went to Southeast Asia. And it's been really well adopted by koi keepers and arowana keepers as well. If you go into arowana forums and search bio home media, you'll see page after page come up about it. Search UK forums and you'll hardly see any. It's the same in the US as well. If you want to see some good feedback, just check my eBay feedback or scroll down the comments after this video has been on a few months and I would encourage people who've used any of these media to give me an honest report about how good they've found it or if they haven't found it good, to also give an honest report as well. People who know me know that I don't doctor the comments, I just leave everything on there. Unless it's got screaming profanities or racist stuff. So just honest reviews, or get left on there. So why are there no shops in the UK stocking this media? Well, people still don't know about it. People in the know, and people obviously who watch my videos, they know about it. They've found it to be excellent. They're raving about it. Your general man on the street, or... Your owners of shops, they haven't heard about it, it hasn't been in many magazines, it's only now starting to show up on forums in the UK, so it's a very slow process and we're not spending tens of thousands on advertising, basically just putting this material out there, letting people find it, letting them find out how good it is, and then the word is slowly spreading. So, is it available in other countries? Yes, it's been available in Southeast Asia. From the Singapore distributor for years, but there's a couple of companies in Australia and also the USA are going to take it as well. It's still a few months away. The US delivery I don't think has left yet. So I would imagine it would be at least two to three months before they get it, process it, find out what taxes, if any, they've got to pay on it. As details of suppliers in other countries become available, I will put them in the video description. Just click show more, the description of the video will come up, including the description of all of the different bio home medias, and basically a rundown of what I've said in this video, and it'll also have an updated list of suppliers as well. So can the bio home media be used in any filter? Yes, within reason. If your filter is designed to take A biological filter media, then just swap that out, put the bio home in. I can guarantee it'll do a better job than what you've got in there. Will it last forever? No, it will not last forever. But with good protection, i.e. good mechanical filtration before it, so that the water gets mechanically cleaned before it hits the media, which is super important for all good media, it will last a heck of a long time. There's a lot of people in the Far East who have been using it for 10, 12, 15 years. And obviously the more stable your filter is, the longer this is going to last. So if you have a big shower system or a sump where really all you're doing is maintaining the mechanical side of things, i.e. sorting out the foams, your media is going to last a hell of a long time. If you've got it in a very small canister filter where the water is being sucked over it and you're constantly taking the trays out, it's going to last less time. The same is true of any media, but the fact that in Asia there's actually a market for second-hand Bio-home media means that it does last a very long time, and even in its used form it's pretty sought after. With regard to setting up your filter, there's actually a very short clip at the end of this video showing you how to set up an external filter, and in the video description there's a link to an 11 minute version of that same video which explains Why and how that filter has been set up like it is. So basically, provide good mechanical filtration before your biological media and your media, whatever type it is, whether it's Bio-home or something else, will last a heck of a lot longer. Right, I think that's about it. My personal eBay selling shop has got a link in the video description. Just click show more. Um... As suppliers become available for different countries, I'm going to add them too, and I don't think there's any other questions that people have been asking that I haven't answered. But if there is something that you want to ask, put it in the comments section, and I will answer it, and that will be to benefit. Thank you very much for watching and here's that very short video of how to set up an external filter. When you order one of these from the manufacturer, it'll come set up wrong, I can almost guarantee it. It's up to you to set it up right. Most of these work by sending the water down a tube, and then it comes up from the bottom and back out to the tank. So in your bottom tray, you want your foams. From bottom to top, coarse, medium, fine. There you go, coarse, medium, fine. That's your mechanical filtration taken care of. All the muck that's in the water should get taken out by those foams. Then in your next trays, the media, and that's it. That's as complicated as an external filter should be. Graded foams, media, mechanical filtration, biological filtration, two stages. Having some sort of polishing foam or pad on the top of there is just nonsense. All it does, it concentrates the fine muck in your media, shortening the life of the media and making it less efficient. Well-protected media lasts longer and stays efficient. And on the subject of media, two best types you can get, BioHome Mini Ultra, BioHome Ultimate. This is the same as that, but this has got added trace elements, which will nourish bacteria, cutting the set-up time in half. Thank you very much. Here endeth the lesson. This is going to take some editing. Just so when you take the top of your filter open... Now this white stuff on the outside is mon... monmer... mon... monmerolite clay. It's terrible. Now this white stuff on the outside of this media is montmorillonite... Oh, I figured out the outtakes at the end.