Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

'They don't cost that much". That is a relative term Duff

2000 new ones about the $220 ish mark. The 4 to 6 thousand that came with my fishies and the filter they threw in. So free

Free I like

2000 bioballs = what volume?

Volume of space they take up. Or amount of water(fish) they would cover.

I mean what volume (space) that they would take up.

Each one is 3cm x 4cm. And I would have filled a sand filter and had a 1/4 spare. I set up a filter for our large aquarium and made a filter out of a 40kg chlorine container and still had left over.

Want to post some pics or drawings of how you did it Duff ... might be useful for others ..

I use permabeads in my sand filter. They cost about $100 per cubic foot but work like nothing I've ever seen. They filter nearly as well as a DE filter. You do need to back wash about every 3rd day though or the top layer of beads will clump together and blow out when you back-wash. No biggie as I just save them and re-use the next time I open the filter. About every 6 months it needs to be opened & stirred up.

http://www.advancedaquaculture.com/aqua ... a-bead.htm

Badflash

That has got to be a rip off for the price, most plastics are supplied to manufacturers in pelletised form. I would imagine you could get food grade pellets HDPE,PET etc for bugger all.

There is a differnce that make it worth the price. These are egg shaped and very heavy, as heavy as stone. They fit together far tighter than stock plastic feed pellets. That is why they provide such great filtration.

OK, never used them, just looked at the price

Curiously though we all have been making suggestions and yet we dont know if Jamie wants them for straight filtration or bio. I was assuming bio in the main and only some filtration.

For me it is just the opposite. I use them for particulate filtration and have a separate bio filter. I use the aquacube from the same place.

BTW, if you know of a source of floating beads, I'd like to know it. This would need to be retail as I don't want to import 50 tonns.

Am in OZ mate
However most of the pelletised plastics have recycle codes and densities. So say polypropelene had a weight just under water it should float (had a few beers so this is imho). Find your plastic and go to a local plastic extruding plant and offer them a carton of beer for a big bag of beads (or however you do this in the US).

We were thinking of using the filter on the quarantine/purge tank, which usually only has a few fish in it every few weeks. Once a year, the new crop of babbies is quarantined for a couple of weeks before going into the monster tank.

keep the suggestions coming