Aquarium Bio Media

Biological activity is at the very heart of your aquarium, everyone’s aquarium in fact. Without aerobic bacteria breaking down the most toxic elements of fish waste Ammonia levels would soar in your set up making fish keeping virtually impossible. That’s why having suitable ‘bio’ filter media that actually encourage long term bacterial growth makes lots of sense Many aquarium filters utilize pieces of synthetic foam or sponge to trap solid waste and act as a home for ‘good’ bacteria and this can work well where space is at a premium, but special Bio-media designed from the beginning to function as the best possible home for filtration bacteria will always out perform any sponge you can think of. We stock quite a few different types of Bio Media and this can make it a little difficult to choose between them, to clarify the situation we have produced a broad overview below:

Aqua One Bio Balls

These round, plastic balls are available in packs of 50 and are designed to culture useful bacteria over their surface. Often used in the bottom try of canister filters or as an additional filter media Aqua One BioBalls have two great advantages – they are virtually indestructible and rinse clean easily making them particularly useful in high waste environments. Bio Balls will not however hold as many bacteria as a ceramic or sintered glass filter media.

Aqua One Parts Bio Prisms

These are complex, semi buoyant, plastic ‘prisms’ designed to grow lots of filtration bacteria without ever blocking up. As with all plastic filter media Bio Prisms are very tough and ideal where a large, loose volume of media is favoured, such as in a substantial trickle filter or home-made deep bed filter.

Aqua One Bio Noodles

A staple in so many Aqua One filters and available in both 250g and 600g pack sizes Bio Noodles just work really well at low cost. Bio Noodles are formed from hyper-baked ceramic material which is microporous providing a substantial surface area for bacteria to colonise and the tubular shape prevents ‘packing’ and ‘channelling’ helping to make sure all the filter media is utilised.

BioNood Excel

Now we are getting serious. BioNood Excel is, we believe, amongst the very best filter media available and is formed from sintered glass which looks like a ceramic material but is filled with tiny pores, pits and tunnels making it the perfect home for those all-important filtration bacteria. No material is more efficient than sintered glass in this role and was developed for laboratory use. To overcome the usual high cost of this material we buy it in bulk and offer simple bags weighing 250g, 500g and 1000g to fit most filters on the market today. The more you can fit in, the more stable your set up will be.

Excel Chips

This is our very best, most efficient sintered glass bio-media formed into random ‘nuggets’ or chips that enable the most media to be fitted into your filter no matter what it’s size or shape. Each chip has a surface area equivalent to a tennis court, now multiply that by several hundred chips and you can see that our Excel Sintered Glass filter media is the very best you can get. You will be surprised at how low cost this superior filter media can be because we buy it in bulk and pass the savings on to our customers. Available in 250g, 500g and 1000g bags.