Wet Dry Media

[Darth Coqui]

what you can use and for color variation, nylon pot scrubbers.
you can find them at the dollar store or wal mart.
cheap, more bio load than bio balls, and differnet colors so you wont be bored with.
Or you can just buy alot and color coordinate, you know color coordinate. (boomerang, nvmd)
just another solution, FYI.

Sunny hooked me up with Bio Bale, cheers mate. Homie has lots of things in his fish shack. Hoarders, gotta love em'

Frankie

[BrAin]

Could you use pea gravel?? Its cheap and the square footage of surface area would be huge. What do yall think, is it possible??

[SunnyHouTX]

It's to heavy and fine for eggcrate to support in a wet/dry

[SunnyHouTX]

So either use something beside eggcrate or stock with bio balls which is a lot lighter and easier to handle when it comes time for sump maintenance

[troy tucker]

IMO. you can run the Purigen in the canister. Use the wet/dry as your bio. and you will have beautiful water.

[BrAin]

I say try the matrix like crazy42bmx suggested. Lots more surface area compared to the balls. I might do the same if I throw down that much on the media.

[Notsoballinxhobo]

K1/K2/K3 needs to be fluidized and would defeat the whole purpose of a wet/dry.

Also running two would mean that you would need to balance the two out by linking them somehow or the failure of one would mean failure of both. I would think one large one to replace the two is a better option but that's just my 20pesos worth.

[SunnyHouTX]

K1/K2/K3 needs to be fluidized and would defeat the whole purpose of a wet/dry.

Also running two would mean that you would need to balance the two out by linking them somehow or the failure of one would mean failure of both. I would think one large one to replace the two is a better option but that's just my 20pesos worth.

Got to disagree there hobo.

If anything, using K1/K3 in a non-fluidized form defeats the purpose of K1/K3 and how it was meant to be used and not the wet/dry. A wet/dry use K1/K3 as it would use bio balls, simply for surface area for beneficial bacteria to grow on.

Your second statement is very puzzling. Could you please explain why you feel the need to "balance the two out" when using two wet/dry filters? What would require a person to do that? What mechanism would cause the failure of one to translate to failure of both? If anything, running them isolated would prevent the failure of one causing the failure of the other. Seeing how output from both wet/drys is mixed in the tank, along with the output from any other filter hooked up to that tank, all filters are in essence linked to the other filters via the water column.

[Notsoballinxhobo]

Got to disagree there hobo.

If anything, using K1/K3 in a non-fluidized form defeats the purpose of K1/K3 and how it was meant to be used and not the wet/dry. A wet/dry use K1/K3 as it would use bio balls, simply for surface area for beneficial bacteria to grow on.

If you use the Kaldness media as it was meant to be used then it would defeat the purpose of the wet/dry and it would be just a sump.
Vice versa, you have just paid good money for media that would have almost the same effect as bioballs.


Your second statement is very puzzling. Could you please explain why you feel the need to "balance the two out" when using two wet/dry filters? What would require a person to do that? What mechanism would cause the failure of one to translate to failure of both? If anything, running them isolated would prevent the failure of one causing the failure of the other. Seeing how output from both wet/drys is mixed in the tank, along with the output from any other filter hooked up to that tank, all filters are in essence linked to the other filters via the water column.

they have seperate water chambers, when one pump goes out the the water from the "shared water column" will then be drawn into that sump section and with that deprive the other wet/dry of adequate water level causing failure in the second wet/dry.

If one overflow went out then the second wet/dry would have to be able to handle not only it's own water chamber but the added amount of water from the other wet/dry.

It is not the same as running two filters and the shared water column of the tank is just that and only that.

As mentioned before it would make absolute sense to run a single, much larger wet/dry vs. two on the same tank.

[Notsoballinxhobo]

Please do continue to share your expertise sunny.

I would like to ask how long you have had experience with wet/dry or sump systems and have you experienced any failure or induced a failure to know what becomes of it.

[SunnyHouTX]

If you use the Kaldness media as it was meant to be used then it would defeat the purpose of the wet/dry and it would be just a sump.

Using Kaldnes in a wet/dry will not defeat the purpose wet/dry as the wet/dry will use K1 as bioballs (to repeat myself). The wet/dry will not be just a sump because it has biomedia (non-fluidized K1 in this instance) to host bacteria (again, to repeat myself). So it will be just a regular wet/dry with bio media other than bioballs.

Vice versa, you have just paid good money for media that would have almost the same effect as bioballs.

I agree that if using K1 in non-fluidized form, it will be overpaying since bioballs perform the same function. But that depends on how the K1 media was obtained in the first place. If bought from somebody who had a Koi pond giving up the hobby or some reason, then the K1 will be super cheap. That's actually how I got enough K1 to fill up 3x Eheim 2260/2, 4x Fx5 and extra for later for cheaper than I could have got bioballs.
...

they have seperate water chambers, when one pump goes out the the water from the "shared water column" will then be drawn into that sump section and with that deprive the other wet/dry of adequate water level causing failure in the second wet/dry.

You're assuming that the different filters get fed different levels of nutrients from the same water columns. The output of one filter gets mixed with output from the other filters and the intakes of all the filters now draw from the common water column for the next go around. No one filter is singularly deprived of any nutrients to digest, and all filters see the reduction in nutrients across the board and the bacteria colonies in all the filters will either reduce or increase to to accommodate the reduction or increase of nutrients in the common water column.

I see that you mention that one wet/dry will "deprive the other wet/dry of adequate water level", but that is simply not the case. Each sump will be fed water by its own overflow and has not bearing on what the other sump is doing except for the reduction in nutrients in the common water body, again, seen by any filter hooked up to the tank.

If one overflow went out then the second wet/dry would have to be able to handle not only it's own water chamber but the added amount of water from the other wet/dry.

The only problem I see in this is the second wet/dry overflowing if it doesn't have adequate sump space to handle the runoff from the main tank that now has the water of the wet/dry that ran dry. In this case, only the bacteria in the first wet/dry will die if not rectified immediately.

It is not the same as running two filters and the shared water column of the tank is just that and only that.

Why? What are the reasons for that? It is after all two separate filters hooked up to the main tank/common water column.

As mentioned before it would make absolute sense to run a single, much larger wet/dry vs. two on the same tank.

Agreed. But I don't see why somebody can't run two wet/dry filters on the same tank if they wanted to other than the hit to the bank account. But it's their money and they can spend it as they wish.

my answers in red

[SunnyHouTX]

Please do continue to share your expertise sunny.

I would like to ask how long you have had experience with wet/dry or sump systems and have you experienced any failure or induced a failure to know what becomes of it.

I don't think I've experienced a sump failure yet in the two years I've had wet/dry filters. And why would anybody knowingly induce sump failure??? That's just dumb.

FYI, I have experience in municipal waste water treatment so keeping fish tanks clean is quite easy for me. Only thing is sometimes I don't have the patience for the initial bacteria bloom in the tank to go away.

[SunnyHouTX]

I have a complete spare wet/dry. I think I might hook it just because I can... instead of hooking up that Eheim...

[algarciajr]

The only thing I would worry about with two wet dry systems would be the effect on tank water level should one of the pumps on a wet dry fail. Would the sump with failing pump be able to handle the water being drawn back into sump after failure and would the water level in the aquarium be high enough to work with a HOB overflow system? OP does not mention if tank is reef ready or not.

[SunnyHouTX]

The only problem I see in this is the second wet/dry overflowing if it doesn't have adequate sump space to handle the runoff from the main tank that now has the water of the wet/dry that ran dry. In this case, only the bacteria in the first wet/dry will die if not rectified immediately.

Exactly Alfonso.