Back when I started keeping fish, filtration consisted of angel hair or glass wool as the mechanical filtration and charcoal as the chemical filtration. Now there are a multitude of ways to perform these types of filtration, but rarely are…
Maxspect Explains Why They Went With a 160 Mesh Media Bag
Chemical filtration can be an important tool for maintaining water quality in a reef aquarium and these days most reefers use some sort of flow through media reactor for use with GFO, activated carbon or aluminum oxide medias. With so…
Nyos Torq Media Reactor Review – Breeze Through Refills with Quick Fit Chambers
The Nyos Torq is one of the most innovative new media reactor designs we’ve seen in the reef aquarium hobby for several years. First revealed in Germany at InterZoo back in May, Nyos has been tweaking and refining the Nyos…
Marine Aquarium Terminology: Activated Carbon vs. Carbon Dosing
As if our hobby weren’t perplexing enough to the average beginner given all the oddball jargon we toss around, things can get doubly befuddling for novices when they come across two or more similar-sounding terms that actually apply to very…
Marine Aquarium Terminology: “Nutrient Export” Defined
Among the myriad mysterious terms that might give neophyte marine aquarists a migraine (okay, I’ll stop with the gratuitous alliteration now) is “nutrient export.” What does this term mean? Is it just a fancy way of saying “filtration”? Well, not…
Elasmobranch Enthusiasts (Part 3): Modern Husbandry – Filtration
From the ferocious great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias) to the graceful white-spotted eagle ray (Aetobatus narinari), Elasmobranchii are a diverse group of boneless fishes that are circumglobal, inhabiting a diverse array of habitats, temperature ranges, salinity, and niches in the…
GFO for Reef Aquarium Phosphate Control
Granular ferric oxide, or GFO, is a widely used form of chemical filtration in the reef-keeping hobby today. Chemical filtration, as the name suggests, purifies water by binding up impurities at the molecular level. As water is sent through the…
The Role of Activated Carbon in the Reef Aquarium
Of the three types of filtration used in the reef aquarium hobby today, biological, mechanical, and chemical, it is chemical filtration that is possibly the least understood. This post is all about activated carbon, the most popular type of chemical…
