Bio Balls or NOT Bio Balls That is the Question

I was in the same boat as you. FOWLR with bioballs/sump wanting to convert to a reef tank. I had an established (about 4 years) 55G tank with about 25-35 lbs of live rock. Nitrates stuck at about 40ppm+ sometimes up to around 60!

Added live rock (about 12 lbs) - nitrates went down a bit, steady around 40.
Cleaned HALF the bioballs in old tankwater and cleaned half of the bottom of the sump of detritus - nitrates went down further.
Removed HALF the bioballs and further cleaned out the sump bottom - nitrates down even further.

Last weekend I removed the remainder of the balls and added cheato and a light (Thanks ALW!) and will test levels tomorrow.

I am hoping they are sub 5ppm, but we will see. Before I removed the remainder of the balls nitrate leves were around 10-15ppm.

For each of the steps i waited a week and did each followed by a 20% water change. I also have some LR curing and hopefully will be adding that later this week.

 

I had 2 fiber filters before water hits the bioballs, a round sponge attached to the overflow pipe and another flat filter on the drip tray. I have removed the flat filter, later will be the round filter.

Even with the single round filter, the flat filter would collect detritus as well as some fairly large bristle worms. I don't think you want these things making it to the bioballs, unless you plan to regularly clean them.

 

If I decide to remove the bio balls will I have to supplement for airation since the bio balls do that?

 

Thanks for the info.. sounds very similar. I am also adding a new T5 8X56 plus moonlight light on saturday (my birthday! or UGH ) and am hoping that will slow the wicked algae I have. I know the Nitrates are contributing too... I am planning to add more live rock over time... but I had never heard of blowing off your live rock with PHead or Turkey Baster... I probably had a lot of crap hiding in the algea and stuff that the Fish didn't even bother trying to find.

 

THIS IS WHAT I HAVE BEEN TRYING TO SAY! K++ FOR YOU!
I've never had a problem... it's how often and much you feed and where the waste goes.

You want to filter as much as you can before the bio-balls. That is what keeps unwanted stuff from getting stuck in the balls and rotting.

Then why remove the bio-balls if you are going to replace it with something else? If you removed them all in one shot that wasn't good because that is where your bio load was stored.