# fluidized sand bed filter



## chuukus (Jun 17, 2008)

I asked this same question a few months ago and never recieved a response. So I did some looking on the web and although I had found that some hobbiests using them on verry large planted tanks they dont seem to be popular for the planted tank.

Maybe someone can explain why.


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## Wasserpest (Jun 12, 2003)

With plants quickly taking up intermediate products of the nitrogen cycle, FB filters are not necessary or beneficial for normally stocked planted tanks.

In Europe, some planted tankers even DOSE their tanks with Ammonia to get better plant growth.


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## 691175002 (Apr 28, 2009)

A fluidized sand filter is intended to support a massive colony of bacteria to break down nitrogenous wastes. This could be of great benefit in a heavily stocked tank but is unnecessary and perhaps even detrimental in a planted tank.

To begin with, planted tanks are not always heavily stocked so unless you are planning on throwing massive amounts of fish into one a fluidized bed is unnecessary. Secondly, while in a normal tank bacteria are the prime users of ammonia and nitrites, plants use them as fertilizer. Chuck goes as far as to say:

_If you add plants to a tank with an established bio-filter, the plants will actually use up some of the ammonia before the bacteria can convert it. That means that there will be less ammonia for the bacteria, so the bacteria colony will decrease in size. And since less ammonia is now being converted to nitrite, there will be less nitrite than before, so some of those bacteria will die off too. _
( http://www.csd.net/~cgadd/aqua/art_plant_newtank.htm ).

This excess of biological filtration is redundant and may even hurt the plants.

Now, there may be cases where a sand filter would be beneficial, such as if you have so many fish the plants can't keep up, but even then I would recommend a trickle filter or something instead.


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## sunfire99 (Apr 8, 2009)

FSB's are not particularly popular in planted tanks because they are not needed. They are a good biofilter for sure, and more popular in saltwater tanks, etc. Plants in a planted tank do a good job of absorbing many of the biproducts in our tanks, and relatively little additional biofiltration is required. Same thing for wet/dry filters in planted tanks which also have some potentially detrimental outgassing of CO2. That said there's nothing wrong with using one, especially if you have a heavy fish load.

lol ninja'd twice while I typed.:icon_roll


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## j-gens (Dec 11, 2008)

right on guys thanks, what would be my best bet of filtration then on a pressurized set up?


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## Wasserpest (Jun 12, 2003)

Canister filters are nice, good capacity for mechanical filtration, no surface agitation, and most of the "stuff" is outside the tank.


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## ZID ZULANDER (Apr 15, 2008)

I second the canister filter. If you are going to do a drilled tank from the bottom the have really good canister style set ups that you can use. Pentair has a set up and so does Red sea. Both need their own pump to run the system but you can hook up more than one canister filter in series.


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## j-gens (Dec 11, 2008)

i do not want to do a drilled tank, if i do the "more than one canister inline" i only end up needing one pump right?


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## ZID ZULANDER (Apr 15, 2008)

j-gens said:


> i do not want to do a drilled tank, if i do the "more than one canister inline" i only end up needing one pump right?


Right if you have the tank drilled with bulkhead holes than you only need one main pump.


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## plantbrain (Dec 15, 2003)

j-gens said:


> anyone use these on their planted tanks?


Have a 6ft model on a 1600 Gallon installation.
Not keen on them personally.
If they strop for much time, the bacteria starts to die fairly quick, better to focus on plants as the biofilter, and then the filtration system is secondary(I prefer larger sumps or canisters or both).

I have never seen any negative things from more filtration, some suggested this, but I've tried many methods here and have never seen anything remotely negative towards plants.

N is N pretty much as far as we are concerned, NO3 or NH4.
NH4 can come from fish, so dose more fish and food if you want more NH4.
It'll get to the plants before the filter in most cases/% wise.
Plants will use either form, I'd not concern much over this, just that there is a good stable supply of N.

Rena filstar XP series are good filters.
Ehiems as well, but a bit over priced for what you get.


Regards, 
Tom Barr


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## Lucero808 (May 23, 2010)

I thought it was so important to post this that I registered on this forum. I know this is an old thread but this information is still important. I've kept aquariums since I was a child. I've kept planted tanks for over 15 years. And yes I do have fluidized bed filters on my tanks.

It seems the argument here against fluidized beds are that they are 'too efficient' at what they are meant to do. I've never heard of such an argument before. Granted planted tanks usually dont require high nutrient levels/inputs but if I have a filter that allows me to feed my fish as much as I want how is that a bad thing. Also with a higher capacity for filtering the water I can have higher fish loads without burdening the plants.

Also, it seems the best reason to use a fluidized Bed filter has been overlooked here. These are commonly know (in all other areas of aquarium keeping) as CO2 factories. The common argument against them being the need to de-gas/raise DO levels. Having kept planted tanks for years I understand the importance of CO2 in my systems. 

So I ask you this. Why would an effective filter that gives us CO2 be deemed bad? Personally I think people are just stuck in their ways. In other words, since everyone has a yellow car they want one too even if the blue one is better for them. Just my $.02.


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## j-gens (Dec 11, 2008)

hmm interesting point lucero... i did not know that these are considered co2 factories in other areas of aquarium keeping... that would have been useful information last year before i built my tank filtration system...
what would be the way you would set up a fsb without offgassing the co2 prior to the entry of the filter and also keeping the bacteria alive/efficient? 
after reading your post i googled fluidized bed filter and co2 and read somewhere that you need to oxygenate the water prior to the entry of the filter. Is this to make it more efficient or is this to allow it to even work in the proper way?


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## OverStocked (May 26, 2007)

I will point out one very key factor... i don't care how superior your bio filtration is, or how much bio media you have... there is only so much bacteria in a cycled aquarium, and there is even less in a cycled planted tank... There just is no real benefit over most canister filters considering the simple fact that it is so easy to kill all the bacteria in one of these. 

I like them, but for this purpose there really is no need.


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## Sharkfood (May 2, 2010)

I believe most nitrifying bacteria are aerobic. That's why wet/dry filtration became so popular in fish only tanks. With the lower flow rates of fluidized sand beds, many think that bacteria towards the end of the media would not receive much oxygen, and therefore nitrifying bacteria wouldn't colonize that area, drastically reducing the effectiveness of the system. Oxygenating the water prior to entry would theoreticaly allow nitrifying bacteria to colonize the media further downstream from the source.

That being said, the most common bacteria that would reduce nitrates into gaseous nitrogen are anaerobic, so for a fish only aquarium, an anaerobic environment could be beneficial, except the same conditions are beneficial to the sorts of microbes that produce hydrogen sulfide as a metabolic product. Nitrogen is vital to a plant growing aquarium though, so in either case, this would be a less than ideal situation. There are also bacteria that are facultive aerobes, and thrive in either condition, but these don't seem to be major players in the nitrogen cycle. Not as far as aquaria are concerned anyway.


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## sanj (Jan 11, 2004)

My understanding is that fluidised sand filters provide an aerobic environment for nitrifying bacteria and not the anerobic environment required for de-nitrifying bacteria. In a planted tank this could be a good thing, not a case of requiring to supply even more nitrates to plants since fluidised sand fiilter does not consume them, but just provides them from nitrifying organic compounds.

I have not gone down this route, but I am considering it as a supplement filtration on a fairly heavily stocked large planted tank.


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## flutterbug (Jan 8, 2012)

Old thread but I was interested in what people thought of this http://www.americanaquariumproducts.com/fluidizedsandfilter.html


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