# K1 media - basically useless for most tanks



## Cyphro (Mar 23, 2018)

skip to 7:30.

What is interesting is that the k1 media has such a tiny surface area. It is totally useless for most tanks considering the amount needed is so much huger than people typically have available. If you have 1 liter is only enough to process waste from approximately 3 grams of food. On top of that the pricing has shot through the roof, so even if you are willing to make a big sump then it has gone from a way to cheaply and easily filter a tank to something prohibitively expensive. Really it works best for a big pond or waste facility where size is not an issue but even maintenance once a year can be an issue.

So if you are thinking about getting some k1 media for your canister filter, you should probably forget it.


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## Lee79 (Nov 7, 2017)

I love mine. Of course, you do need a sump.


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## Cyphro (Mar 23, 2018)

There are a lot of people who use it without. Also the price has gone up crazily high due to popularity. There's also more options than when it became popular. If I were making a sump today I would probably get/make an algae scrubber.


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## wryan (Dec 6, 2015)

Cyphro said:


> There are a lot of people who use it without. Also the price has gone up crazily high due to popularity. There's also more options than when it became popular.* If I were making a sump today I would probably get/make an algae scrubber*.


I watched a couple of videos on these after reading your post mentioning it in another thread, including one where a guy with a 210G salt tank replaced the innards of his entire sump filtration set up with just an algae scrubber.

Very impressive ... :thumb:


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## Cyphro (Mar 23, 2018)

I have a bunch of flame moss in a refugium and it does an amazing job of cleaning up nitrates. The algae scrubber works on the same idea but is supposed to be ten times as good.


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## wryan (Dec 6, 2015)

Cyphro said:


> I have a bunch of flame moss in a refugium and it does an amazing job of cleaning up nitrates. The algae scrubber works on the same idea but is supposed to be ten times as good.


I was going to comment in that other thread but didn't.

About a year ago I discovered a LFS that is strictly saltwater near where I live ... never noticed they were there ... but it turns out they have been there over 30 years.

Last weekend I took the wife down there as they had a very beautiful reef tank (265 Gallon ?) and she loves saltwater fish.

When I had been there at some earlier point I discussed (a little) the difference with him in upkeep (and cost) between fresh water and salt water tanks. I was under the misconception that salt water was much more expensive and difficult, required lots of monitoring and maintenance, etc.

He claimed that this was not so ... that once they were established, they really weren't much more difficult to maintain than fresh water tanks.

This past weekend I got into that a little more with him and his wife.

The thing that really blew me away was how little they do in terms of partial water changes (their reef tank has a sump with refugium) ...

Around 10% to 20% ... ONCE PER MONTH ...

Granted, the reef tank wasn't completely packed with fish (maybe 20 ?) ... and it did have lots of living coral ... still ...


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## Lee79 (Nov 7, 2017)

Cyphro said:


> There are a lot of people who use it without. Also the price has gone up crazily high due to popularity. There's also more options than when it became popular. If I were making a sump today I would probably get/make an algae scrubber.


I am curious, are these other options you mention in a fluidized bed set up? The amount of space required to fluidize the proper amount of media requires a lot of space - like you have with a sump. If someone is putting it in a canister they are wasting their money. K1 is specifically designed for fluidized bed filters (albeit really large ones). One _can_ use it differently, but I don't know why they would want to.


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## Cyphro (Mar 23, 2018)

wryan said:


> Cyphro said:
> 
> 
> > I have a bunch of flame moss in a refugium and it does an amazing job of cleaning up nitrates. The algae scrubber works on the same idea but is supposed to be ten times as good.
> ...


Well, you don't change water in a pond, right? You just add water and chemicals as needed and use plants and algae to take out nitrates. I think that is the only way to go with salt in the long term, and I see lots of videos today of people who have not changed their water in a year or more.

I have been slowly heading that direction over time, but right now I still have freshwater stuff only. I hardly change my water any more, of course I am not that heavily stocked either. I could not do this with 300 fish in a 150 gallon tank like I had going on before when I had lots of breeders in my tank. I think it could be possible with a big enough algae scrubber though.

Expense has always been the issue for me with salt water. I don't mind paying for equipment but when you 'have to' buy carbon constantly, by water at 25 cents a gallon and so on, it can become a real drain over time.

You can also make your own saltwater mix, too. Both the mix itself and reverse osmosis are fairly expensive.

http://www.thereeftank.com/forums/f76/d ... 98902.html

This guy who sells live bait fish had better luck with a home mix than with sea water.

Most likely some of the elements are unneeded or harmful. I would not put in strontium for example. Tap water should have most of the other trace elements you want, like calcium.

You can probably get away with just epson salt and regular salt for fish (but up the epsom salt slightly to make up for the other mg you leave out). Probably need to add in potassium for corals though, and to me inveterbrates is probably the biggest draw salt water tanks have over fresh water.

At some point I think I will move on to guppies and mollies in salt water, and then slowly experiment from there with building up a reef and SW fish collection.


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## Cyphro (Mar 23, 2018)

Lee79 said:


> Cyphro said:
> 
> 
> > There are a lot of people who use it without. Also the price has gone up crazily high due to popularity. There's also more options than when it became popular. If I were making a sump today I would probably get/make an algae scrubber.
> ...


The reason I posted the thread is that a lot of people seem to use it in their canister filters. In the video he shows a custom filter you see in a lot of videos using k1 media in a water bottle, too. I hate to rain on people's parade in every thread like that so I decided to make this one to give people something to consider.


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## Lee79 (Nov 7, 2017)

Cyphro said:


> Lee79 said:
> 
> 
> > Cyphro said:
> ...


Fair enough :thumb: 
The soda bottle trick did go viral and misinform a good many people as to the actual volume required. I have never really used canisters for anything but mechanical filtration, it is interesting the things people stick in them though. I usually don't even read the threads regarding canisters as I do not know anything about them. I honestly had no idea people where putting K1 in them. That definitely needed to be called out, good job.


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