Wierd filter media

[Expectorating_Aubergine]

I'm a bit of an oddball and a cheapskate. I like to use these fan worm shells for the filter media in my kids aquarium. They work great and as they slowly dissolve, they release minerals into the water. I also have a few ceramic rings in there too for good measure. The filter is a cheapie HOB we got at Walmart on sale. It has worked fine for a little less than 4 years. Anybody else use unusual filter media?

Edited August 20, 2023 by Expectorating_Aubergine

[Littlefish]

Good idea, oyster shells and barnacles should work, too

Maybe some wallmart fire retardant-free pillow stuffing (filter floss) in front of them to keep them from filling up with gunk.  One bag has lasted me 4 ys in a nano reef tank with barely a dent in the bag.

[Littlefish]

Now that you've brought the topic up, the thought entered my mind, why don't we use the dry rock that we use in salt water as fw media?  That is all I use in the sump in my reef tank after the filter floss.  Is there a drawback besides a softwater angel/discus type tank becoming too hard?

[Expectorating_Aubergine]

Yeah the only thing I can think of is the pores being too small and clogging. Then again, wouldn't that just turn into anaerobic filtration? In a filter that has aerobic filtration going on? Best of both worlds if you ask me....

[Gannon]

On 8/20/2023 at 4:18 PM, Littlefish said:

Now that you've brought the topic up, the thought entered my mind, why don't we use the dry rock that we use in salt water as fw media?  That is all I use in the sump in my reef tank after the filter floss.  Is there a drawback besides a softwater angel/discus type tank becoming too hard?

Can you use that dry rock in any cool freshwater aquascapes is my question haha

[nabokovfan87]

On 8/21/2023 at 8:50 AM, Expectorating_Aubergine said:

Yeah the only thing I can think of is the pores being too small and clogging. Then again, wouldn't that just turn into anaerobic filtration? In a filter that has aerobic filtration going on? Best of both worlds if you ask me....

A lot of the concerns for me would purely be around effectiveness and buffering.  The media in question dissolves over time because it's becoming dissolved in the water column the same way that crushed coral (same thing as the dry rock) would do. That affects water parameters and it can also contain things that we don't test for.  That's Ultimately the choice there.  Media is often "best" as being something inert and something affordable. It can be sand even, but the goal is to have something that gives the tank and the bacteria stability.

I'm the first post there's the pieces of the biomedia inside of the basket. It's good and all, but it's about the equivalent to using eheim mech or similar hard media to remove large debris. That placement makes it mechanical and not biological.

Missing the sponges and the mechanical filtration before the biological is going to lead to very clogged media in the long term. This won't encourage "the full cycle" as pondguru calls it, but it will just result in clogged media. The media also isn't in bags which makes cleaning it a bit difficult to combat this over time.

I would make sure you have some sort of prefilter and mechanical  filtration on the setup, essentially.

[HelplessNewbie]

Do nylon pot scrubbers count as weird filter media?

[nabokovfan87]

On 8/21/2023 at 12:05 PM, HelplessNewbie said:

Do nylon pot scrubbers count as weird filter media?

Yep. 😂