why is it?

[brians4671]

ive heard several people state. if i am going to grow coral i dont want a bioball style setup? then i walk into any given marine store and they are using them?

[thirty5]

I dont know why anyone has bio balls, IF YOU HAVE LR. All bio balls are, are detrius collectors. All they do is raise your levels..

So if you have LR then get rid of bioballs. The marine stores may have them because usually they have such a large amount of water that it is not a big deal. But in a home aquarium having the bioballs ontop of LR can be too much.

[brians4671]

what is the differance from a sump/ refuge and mud tank????

[tkeracer619]

Bioballs do not have anerobic (lack of oxygen) bacteria. They have tons of surface area and are great for converting ammonia to nitrite to nitrate but stop there. Live rock takes it a step further and converts nitrate into harmless nitrogen gas.

A lot of fish stores use bioballs because you cannot medicate live rock. After a tank has been medicated and the biology trashed they can pull the bioballs for cleaning and replace them from other healthy tanks giving the tank instant filtration.

A sump is basically a place to hold your skimmer, pumps, heaters, and any thing you need to put in the tank but dont want visable. It gives extra water capacity, surface skimming, and better temp control.

A fuge can supply pods and other otherwise fragile critters to the tank. It can offer nutrient export if filled with algae such as Cheato. It also can be run on a reverse or 24 hour light scedule to help keep your PH up during the night.

By mud tank I assume you mean something similar to a deep sand bed. This does the same as Live Rock as far as the nitrogen cycle is concerned. Often people will make a remote deep sand bed out of a 5 gallon bucket for nitrate export.