Bio-balls

[noah]

I have been reading a lot of negative comments on bio balls. I currently have some in my sump and was considering taking them out. I have a plenum equipped 4 inch aragonite bed for substrate. Will the denitrification take care of the nitrates caused by the bioballs or will it build up. I have yet to ever detect any nitrates in the system. I also have clams in my tank and was wondering if they would benefit from the bioballs as I have heard clams need a certain amount of nitrates in their diets. Any comments?

[Doug1]

Do you have any macro or unwanted algae flourishing in your tank or sump? It could be that your plenumn is keeping up with nitrate production if no algaes present otherwise the algae will bind up the nitrates in the cells. That is the reason for the popularity of algae refugiums and filters. It also explains why so many new tanks go thru horrible algae blooms with parameters that appear to be OK.
Clams will utilize N tho as I recall they will utilize ammonia first and nitrate is the last choice. I have no clue the amounts they can consume relative to a given tank size

[Alice]

From looking at your specs you've got 65 lbs of live rock; I'd think that's more than enough to handle pulling the bio-balls. Pull them say, 1/4 a week until you've removed them all, monitoring water parameters as you go.

Personally, I'm one of those people that feel that bio-balls have no place on a reef tank; I call 'em cat toys

~Alice