New sand and Gravel, + Filter improvements...maybe!

I just love spending ages pouring loads of water over new gravel or in this case sand to get it as clean as possible for my beloved aquarium, perhaps just a tad of sarcasm in that part of my blog post. Anyway onto the filter, I don't know if I've caused any potential issues but I've just removed the "check ball" from the intake strainer of my fluval 206 external, and all that seems to have happened is the outflow speed has increased quite a bit for doing so, had a little ponder and during my ponderation I asked myself if this may be a bad thing in some way I can only think that the time that the water has to pass over the bio media will have increased and questioned would this reduce its effectiveness?

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Comment by Gary E on March 17, 2013 at 11:21am: Alan,

A general rule of thumb regarding flow rates is that faster is better.

One glaring exception is when using a UV sterilizer and slow flow or longer ‘dwell time’ is preferred. By speeding up your flow, you will be providing your bacteria colony access to more water, more quickly, which they will appreciate.

Since much of the bacteria are contained submerged in the filter, their oxygen supply is dependant on the level of oxygen in the aquarium water. The oxygen they require will be infused in the water that passes through and among the colony. Ensuring high oxygen levels in the aquarium, by using an airstone for example, will promote healthy bacteria in your filter, delivered by the more rapid flow you have just created.

The beauty of a wet/dry or trickle filter, as opposed to a canister filter for biological filtration, is that the biological media containing the bacteria colony is not submerged but simply kept wet by dripping water from the aquarium. This exposes the bacteria to the air and promotes an extraordinary, healthy bacteria colony, as well as heavy oxygenation of the water returning to the aquarium.

I hope this is helpful.

Regards,

-Gary

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Comment by Alan Kirkup on March 17, 2013 at 6:36pm: Cool thanks Gary, I love this learning, much has changed since my last fish keeping days (pre-internet) Will have to do a bit of trial and error stuff regarding flow rates once I get the UV rigged up, + extra flow is moving water so fast my new sand substrate is getting shifted about a little too much, once again many thanks for your advice