Drinking straws as a bio-filter?

Jspigs

Jspigs

There is always more to learn
Aug 5, 2009
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I was looking at a video about how to build a DIY aquarium filter (to find it just search youtube for "DIY aquarium filter" without the "") where the person who made the video used a plastic drinking straw cut up into pieces as a bio-filter along with gravel. My question is would pieces of plastic drinking straws work as a bio-filter? Edit: I forgot to say that I added a cut up drinking straw to my filter just to see what happens.
 
Not enough surface area IMO to be a good biological media, and it'll likely float.
 
crushed lava rock in a net would work right? and ive heard you can use old hair curlers i think. just throwing out some ideas.
 
My favorite now is polypropylene twine, about 20 feet pulled apart and rolled and tangled into a ball or disk shape works great at a cost of about 1000 feet per $1, mostly mechanically. For bio you just cant beat sponge or pads. But I do use drinking straws whole in all my AC filters.
 
Actually Biological and mechanical in aquarium filtration are pretty much the same thing. Bacteria will grow on any "friendly" surface, some plastics are chemically unfriendly to bacteria due to resins or additives that are toxic, obviously drinking straws should be safe.

I guess the defining difference between biological and mechanical would be how fine the material is. The finer it is the more TSS (total suspended solids) it will accumulate but will also be more restrictive to flow so a larger incoming surface area is needed.
-----BUT-----
Bacteria will also grow in the fine material so it's also biological and probably more so than most course media.

You can have a very effective filter by just filling your media tray with fish tank gravel but the flow may be restricted.

Now to get to the next level in this process you need to know there are ANAEROBIC and AEROBIC bacteria.
Anaerobic live in basically a non air (oxygen starved) environment,
Aerobic live in a wet air (oxygen rich) environment.

So what you get into is a balance of surface area with the desired flow in a particular sized structure.

All truth told the whole aquarium filter market is a gimmick anyway. Anyone can make an excellent filter with most any plastic tubs or containers with a couple rules in mind. You need enough flow and you need enough bacteria surface area.

Your best filters will incorporate both, that is why wet/dry filters are ALWAYS best.

I just made a very cool one for my friend's son's first tank. Yes he has a full blown kick a$$ wet dry filter made out of a 1 gallon tea jug from Walmart and a Rio 600 pump. Throw in about $5 worth of PVC fittings and pipe and BANG we have a very cool filter using some floss and a couple hands full of bio balls I had laying around.

So pretty much anything works as media as long as it's not toxic (even the glass in your aquarium has bacteria on it) and the finer it is the more TSS it will remove.

The real trick is sizing things large enough to maintain themselves,,, YES zero maintenance.

Fine material has always been thought of as mechanical but it is also biological, it is generally flow restrictive.

Course material has always been thought of as biological it is less flow restrictive and in a wet/dry application it allows more air movement to keep things from turning anerobic.

Anaerobic are also considered septic and tend to be black, stink of hydrogen sulfide and not too good for our tanks but are there.

The more air we can get to our filters the better they perform, that said, I hate canister filters.

But you will always need to do water changes unless you want to get REAL complicated and have some time to kill checking water samples.

Sorry for the long post I was bored,,,,
 
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Actually I should clarify not all anaerobic bacteria are septic. There is probably a lot better explanation/definition than mine but you get the idea anyway
 
Amaozonlee said:
The more air we can get to our filters the better they perform, that said, I hate canister filters.
Click to expand...

Let me first say welcome since this is your 2nd post and I have had the pleasure of welcoming you the AC. 8^D

Actually O2 water solubility is much lower then the air we breath and in freshwater 5-8% PPM O2 is where most aquariums fall. So for the most part if the fish aren't belly up then the Aerobic bacteria which also live on the bottom of the aquarium, are doing just fine in the canister filter with the O2 soluble water rushing by at 300-600 GPH. In fact due to the concentrated flow of water probubly better then in the aquarium or wet/dry combined.

Having just bought a reef ready tank in need of some repairs and having read the pro and con of wet/dry it is clear to me that they are very valuable and almost necessary for SW reef tanks. However for freshwater wet/dry filters are substantially less necessary to that point that a canister filter is just much more effective, lower maintenance and noise friendly, and cost friendly. So I am in the process of pulling out my two 5x5 overflows and getting the bottom replaced without holes because for the use of FW I think it will be saving myself space, time, noise, and money IMHO.
 
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