Quote Originally Posted by Oliver
Quote Originally Posted by Basil1
You can use the nylon scrubbies for bio filter. Quilt batting that you get at a craft store makes a very good mechanical filter but plugs quickly. Last pond I used a 32 gallon rubbermaid trash can. Inside was a plastic tall clothes hamper on 4 inch pvc legs. Inside were a couple hundred scrubbies. Inverted the hamper lid and put a piece of cut to fit ac filter material on it. Water pumped in thru the lid and out a 4 way on to the filter. Gravity fed down and out a pipe about 4 inches up.
I know that people use nylon scrubbies for bio-filter material, but I have a concern that I have not checked into, so I am throwing it out here.

Nylon is a high dielectric material. My concern is that autotrophic bacteria supposedly attache themselves to substrates and I am wondering if the high dielectric of nylon might preclude them from making that attachment. Again, I'm not saying they won't but for some reason I sense a need to question this.

Just a gut level feeling, which probably means I read somewhere in the distant past about organisms attaching themselves to synthetic material.

Wish I could recall it better. Guess I will do a search on this when I get the time, whenever that is.

I'm more into converting the solid and liquid fish waste than I am "filtering" it out of the flow.

Oliver
Yes I'd rather convert the waste into something useable. That's why my particle filter which is filled with gravel has 18 large worms in it. I'm hoping that the two air stones I put in the rocks will provide enough oxygen for them. At any rate, this system is not functioning in balance and I need to fix it.

I'm concerned that there is just simply too much waste in the system right now. I can see how the filters would keep the fish waste out of the pond and out of the table but if all water in the system is connected than I can't see how that will change the PH. I could see it helping if I periodically cleaned out my filter but I do not want to do that, that's why I got the worms.

I think I'm gonna try out those Scrubbing pads in my particle filter and siphon vaccuum out the solid fish waste that I can see in the table. Hopefully that will help. I may also dump in some PH up as I have some left over from my brief stint at Hydroponics.