Do ceramic rings work ? Or is it just marketing?

[raja]

So i took some old ceramic media which i was using in a old tank 2 or 3 years ago.

The media was used for more than a year after that ,i converted that tank to saltwater so i switched ceramic rings for live rock and stored all the ceramic rings without rinsing in a loft .

Today i found them accidentally and since i have been researching a bit on biological media and looking how aged and discolored my ceramic ring was, compared to a new white colored one ,i decided to pop open it to see the fossils of all the beneficial bacteria that had lived in. And to my surprise,the inside looked brand new ,no discoloration whatsoever.

so does that mean ,all the massive internal surface area a ceramic ring is supposed to have is useless?
Is ceramic ring any better that pebble,if all the internal surface area is not used ?

I have attached the pics of both the outside and inside of the ceramic rings.

I'm eager to hear your opinions.

 

[raja]

More pics

 

[krichardson]

Unless I've had it wrong all these years I was under the impression that the bacteria colonized and lived on the porous outer surface of the ceramic media.I don't recall reading of any bacteria boring their way into the material.

 

[esoxlucius]

Great observation, and one I have thought about too. I just believed that due to the porous nature of ceramic rings that water would soak inside and bacteria would colonise the many hundreds of square feet of surface area, or whatever the manufacturers claim, within the ring.

What I struggle to get my head round is that the holes are that fine you would never get oxygen and nutrient rich water free flowing through the ring to sustain the colony within, especially when the outer surface is blocked by the viscous cell membranes of billions of bacteria. The water will just take the easiest route, and in my eye it would be around the ceramic ring and not through it.

You'd think that the inside of each ring would be more suited to anaerobic activity but yet manufacturers don't push the "nitrate reduction" thing either.

duanes needs to get involved with this one. I'd be very interested in his take on this.

 

[kingthedog]

I am pretty sure they work fine but I prefer lava rocks

 

[duanes]

Since beneficial bacteria are aerobic, krichardson's suggestion that bacteria not working far into anoxic areas is reasonable to me.
And unless gunk is regularly rinsed, swished or some way cleaned off any surface area of biological media , I believe it makes that media less efficient, no matter what it is, this is why I rail against allowing media to go for extended periods without cleaning.
I also believe no one media is any better than another, its all just the oxygenated surface area that matters.

 

[krichardson]

Since beneficial bacteria are aerobic, krichardson's suggestion that bacteria not working far into anoxic areas is reasonable to me.
And unless gunk is regularly rinsed, swished or some way cleaned off any surface area of biological media , I believe it makes that media less efficient, no matter what it is, this is why I rail against allowing media to go for extended periods without cleaning.
I also believe no one media is any better than another, its all just the oxygenated surface area that matters.

While I have about a pound of them that I got in past second hand supply purchases I have never used the ceramic rings in my systems,I have mostlyy stuck with either bio balls or wheels.
I was also going to touch on the media being hindered as it gets clogged and covered in biofilm.

 

[tigerbob]

It still has larger surface area than regular pebbles which are relatively smooth.

 

[duanes]

I currently have a sump with a combo of rings, bio-balls, lava rock, porus rock, and sea shells.
They all seem to work.
The only way to tell if one worked better than another, would be to isolate each form of bio-film cover media, on a bare tank (or tanks) , feed the an exact amount of food each day, exact same water changes, with the exact same bioload, and compare ammonia readings for a specified amount of time (perhaps months).
Other than with a controlled test like that, any opinions are all conjecture

 

[ryang85]

Since I have found pot scrubbies I honestly don't use anything but them. Easy to get and super cheep while effective.

This picture came from another thread on this site and is not mine.