Ralph's Corner - Lesson Two
© Winston Vaughan Schoenfeld
Basic Filtration Theory - A body in motion will remain in motion . . .
Ralph is a VERY ecologically minded fish. Ralph has to be - he has a very delicate ecological balance that has to be maintained if Ralph wants to live to a ripe old age. I may be just a simple clown fish but I really believe in recycling. Especially when it has to do with filtration media. True, Ralph is a very selfish fish. Ralph believes that filtration media should be used again and again. Ralph thinks that filtration media should be very simple to set up and exceptionally simple to clean. Fish health hinges directly on the amount of particulate matter that is in the water that the fish lives in. The less stuff that the water carries the better for all the inhabitants of the tank.
The ability for filtration mechanical media to work efficiently seems to increase proportionately opposite to the cost of the media. You know what Ralph uses? Well, I'll tell you. Ralph uses garden gravel. Yup, garden gravel purchased for two bucks a bag full. Ralph's buddy, that dropper of fish food into the tank type buddy went down to the local hardware store, bought some decorative pea gravel, washed the stuff real good and threw it into a tall, large diameter tube. The tall column of water lets gravity settle out the heavy stuff. Then it uses a bunch of rock to filter out the rest of the stuff. Going into that tube, down the center is a really long protein skimmer that strips the incoming water of proteins on its way down to the bottom of the filter. What comes up and out of that tube is really clean. This makes Ralph very happy.
This is the second article of a series of articles that are being written by guest writer Peter Odell. If you missed the last editorial, please take a look at it . . . some of the information in it will be used in this editorial.
So how does this filtration work? Last month, we talked about letting passive forces such as density and gravity do some of the work for the filter. At this point, Ralph should explain that the mechanical filtration that Ralph speaks about is already found in the biological filtration beds that most marine aquarium enthusiasts swear by. Ralph is not going to talk about the biological process that use and transform the nitrates and nitrites in the tank water. Ralph may talk about that some other time, but for the present, Ralph is going to talk purely physical here! Ralph thinks that the same idea that presents a large area for water to interact with nitrosoma and nitrobactr can also be used to remove large quantities of mung from the water. Think about it. My human has in the past, spent a great deal of time washing some really yucky stuff from the "bio balls" in filtration systems. I am sure that you have done the same thing.
