BEST FILTER MEDIA FOR AQUARIUM FILTERS - TYNE VALLEY AQUATICS

It's Richard from Tyne Valley Aquatics here again, and in this video I'm going to talk about the best filter media for aquariums. There's all sorts of manufacturers claiming that theirs is the best. Some are for certain situations, some aren't. Some are absolutely hopeless for any situation. So I'm going to quickly run through some of the best ones that we use in our aquariums, and I also recommend that you use in yours. Okay, here we've got a lineup of some of the best ones that I've found. These ones along the top here, and carrying on down to here, are all ceramic. So they're all made of sintered glass. Really have a sandy texture. Here, the first one, which is this, is called Bio Home Standard. It's basically an extruded ceramic media. Has a huge surface area. It's slightly rough to the touch, which is always a good sign, and it has a massive surface area both on the outside and also inside of the media, which is important. Outside of the media supports aerobic bacteria, which will convert ammonia to nitrite and nitrite to nitrate, but on the inside of the media, right inside the core of this, you have anaerobic conditions. So that'll support anaerobic bacteria which will consume nitrate so you're really converting three things ammonia, nitrite and nitrate. This one is BioHome Plus which basically does exactly the same job as the BioHome but it's slightly smaller it can be broken up as well to fit into very small spaces there you go you can just make out the internal structure there has a huge surface This one is red because of an additive that is put in at the time of manufacture which contains trace elements and it also helps the bacteria to set up a hell of a lot faster than it normally would in standard media. So they're the two small BioHome. This one is a new one which is much bigger, very very porous and it's called BioHome Ultra. This one's also suitable for trickle filters and koi systems and pond filters. This, again, has a massive available surface area, both externally and internally. And the BioHome Ultra is actually so porous, I don't know whether you could hear that, but you can actually breathe through it, wait and breathe out through it. I wouldn't fancy breathing in through it and surviving by breathing in through it, but it's, there you go, there's my breath on there. That shows that the breath came out of here. Very, very porous stuff indeed. Probably is the best media you can get. Right, the next one is these strange looking... Little balls. They're actually very light and they are also a ceramic media but these have been specifically designed for use in a moving bed filter. This white stuff on them is very high quality monmerolite clay which helps to condition the water. And although these lads do have a very big surface area, the one downside is that if you have them in a very small container and the moving bed is crashing them together a little bit too much, it can wear away. So they are more suited to bigger vessels i.e. in koi systems where you have a lot of this stuff moving more gradually than you would in an aquarium moving bed filter. It can also be used in static filters, the likes of sumps, external filters, overhead filters and trickle filters. So that's a real good dual purpose media. This one's called Biomotion. So the last ceramic media that I'm going to talk about is the one that most people will be familiar with. It's your ceramic rings that you would normally get in an external filter or in an overhead filter. Really what you want to look for when you're choosing rings or noodles is a rough texture. All too often you get this stuff and it's as smooth as glass, no available surface area, you might as well have marbles in your filter. This stuff is actually from Aqua One, it's called BioNude and it's one of the better ones. Now these strange looking lads are really designed for a big sump filter or a big external filter or even a koi filter and at first glance they just look like plastic balls with quite a lot of surface area but when you open them up they actually have a block of foam inside and that collects muck and gets colonized with bacteria so that's really a two-in-one sort of a media. Nowhere near the surface area of the good ceramic media but it's a great one for koi filters And other filters with a high flow-through rate. And now taking it down a step, we've got a media that's been specifically designed, again, for moving bed filters. And this is called Hellex. It has a nice protected surface area there. Lovely open structure. And the idea of that, and also the more commonly recognised K1, is that as these are clashing together, they rub off old bacteria. So only very strong, vigorous, eager feeding bacteria can colonize this media. That makes the filters very efficient at removing ammonia and nitrite. One downside is that the moving bed may produce quite a lot of nitrate. Here's a moving bed filter that we've got in one of our tanks. You can see how the media is just bumping together there. This one's actually using K1. I think we've got one with... Pelex and I think we've also got one with the bio-motion in somewhere as well. Having this filter in here just ensures that there's no ammonia or nitrite because we normally have discus in here and they require very clean water. So that should have given you a brief idea of what I think are the best medias. Without bacteria the media is useless. Now then bacteria will build up quickly on the ceramic media but on plastic media it really does take quite a while for a layer of bacteria to build up. I sell a lot of this stuff on eBay, some of it per litre, like the lighter stuff, some of it per weight, like the bigger ceramic media, and every portion that you buy will have some of these fellas in, basically every litre of this will have about five of these balls in, and these are gel bacteria balls, these slowly dissolve over a period of weeks, and they help to set up any of this media very very quickly with good bacteria. So really they're essential for setting this lot up quickly. Now just a few brief notes before I go. There are other moving bed media available. I've actually tried quite a few of them from a Chinese company and generally they don't have as much surface area as the K1 or especially the Helix. They're normally a little bit cheaper but you're paying less and you're getting less surface area. I would personally rather pay more and get more surface area. Make the filter smaller and more efficient. With regard to the ceramic media, I tend to look for a nice rough one that's porous, very porous. The more porous it is, the more bacteria is going to colonise it, get into all the little nooks and crannies and sort out your water properly. Many people make the mistake of, if the tank's a little bit overstocked, but they've got a decent filter, they'll chuck that filter away and buy a slightly bigger filter. Maybe so. thing off ebay or something, nine times out of ten they come with media which is crap. The best upgrade you can make to your tank is to upgrade the filtration. That involves upgrading the filter media. Choose the best and make your filter work at its full capacity. There's no point filling the filter full of cheap crappy media and having it not do the job. Use the best stuff, make your filter work for your tank. One last word on filtration it's very important to have a good pre-filter before your main filter media so if you're using say the best stuff bio home ultra it has a huge surface area but if all those little holes and all those little ridges and bumps get filled in with muck from your tank It's not going to be as efficient as if before the ceramic media you had a good layer or two of foam. So you'd have your coarse foam filtering out heavy muck, then a fine foam catching all the very fine particles, and then you would have your ceramic media. That's very important to do it that way. That makes it most efficient. So there you go. I've probably made a bit of a mess of some parts of that video, but I hope you get the gist of it. Generally, the more you spend on media, the better media you get. But research it first, because there is a lot of companies out there producing crap, which will cost you a lot of money, and it won't do the job. Always choose media which will suit your particular purpose. There's no point getting heavy ceramic media to use in a moving bed. It simply won't work. Likewise, don't buy the moving bed media, the plastic one, K1 and Helix, Thanks for use. In a canister filter, it hasn't got enough surface area to do much good. It's designed for a specific purpose, which is to move within a column of water within a container and support very vigorous bacteria. It won't support that vigorous bacteria if it's in a confined space and it's not bumping together. Thanks for viewing. Obviously, everybody has their own idea on what makes the best filtration and what the best filter media is. I've merely given you the benefit of my knowledge. You may take it on board, you may not. Thanks for watching.