Eheim Substrat Pro

[lamontcarter]

If someone were to replace their live rock with Eheim Substrat Pro, how much of it would they need to use the Berlin style of filtration? How much per gallon is required to completely filter an aquarium of nitrates, and nitrite?

[thomasp123]

Hmm interesting question as I discontinued use of my canister last month but took all the biomedia and made a chamber in my sump so the water would have to flow through the biomedia. My tank is 5 month old now, 75 g, with 7 fish added one at a time over the 5 months. I used mostly dry white rock in the tank with about 8 lb of live rock plus whatever came in with corals etc. I started the tank and let it cycle with a bottle of biospira and to this day I have never measured any nh4 or no3 and although I had some algae problems early on all is well now. I do grow a fair crop of macro algea in my sump and a bunch of halimda and fealther calupera in the display and that seems to work fine.

[Snausy]

I used to use an Eheim wet/dry cannister full of sustrat pro and it worked pretty well for breaking down ammonia/nitrite but you end up with TONS of nitrate in the tank...

Switched to LR and a beefy skimmer in sump and have never looked back. If you mean you use the substrat pro+skimmer in sump instead of LR + skimmer in sump then you may be able to make that work pretty well. You'd need a good efficient way of pushing the water through it though. The Eheim wet/dry cannister does really well in that regard.

The only way you are going to get rid of nitrate is skimmer...the subrat pro just turns ammonia and nitrite into nitrate...in a way it's a nitrate factory. Skimmers and water-changes are the only way to get rid of nitrate from my understanding.

[thomasp123]

I have zero nitrate as I do use a skimmer and I have a bunch of macro algea in the sump as well. I built a plastic box with many slots cut in it. The box forms a wall in the sump so the water must pass through it. all the bio media is in the box. It all seems to work wonderfully.