Trickle Filter media
 

I've been trying to find out what this stuff is called, so i'll describe it the best I can.
Instead of BioBalls, you can use this plastic mesh looking product, which is supposed to be way better than bioballs. It really looks like someone had a hot glue gun of plastic and made a 1" thick mat of the liquid glue in a squiggled mess.. In Edmonton, AI uses it in their sumps. GOOGLE HAS FAILED ME...ARGH! :D

Thanks!

oooo I think i found it.. Matala.

What benefit does this provide?

supposidly it has more surface area and better flow for the nitrifying bacteria to attach to. And it takes up way less space

When bio reefs and trickle filters first took off in Canada in the 80s we could not source bioballs, if we did find them for sale they were HUGELY expensive.

So some kid at the LFS recognized that his Mom's haircurlers would make a decent substitute, the best part was we could buy haircurlers at Kmart for pennies! They worked fine.

http://www.koiadventures.co.za/UserF...rlerFilter.jpg

Does your mom know what happened to her curlers? Looks like she spent a fortune replacing what you took :)

Smart Kid!

Bio-bale?

http://www.cpraquatic.com/products/biobale.html

Thought I was missing something here...but this methodology went the way of the 2lb cell phone...much has been learned/improved since the 80's as noted above. I would recommend investigating what many others are doing with their sumps on this board, and others boards, and I am sure you will find this practice is not used any longer. Not saying you can not achieve your goals using them, but I would research further. Cheers.

Seeif someone wanted to have a heavily stocked tank without using live rock or to ogment the live rock one would use either a canister filter or a trickle filter. I prefer the trickle filter. I'm sure there are pureists that would condem this thinking, but why reinvent the wheel. We know nitrifying bacteria can colonize in any of these methods, but we prefer the more natural way of lr. Lr isn't always the best solution, especially when you want display tanks with little to no objects , just fish, so trickle filters work for these instances.