Fluval zeolite

[robdog013]

I have an established 3 ft sumo for a 6x2x2 tank. The sumo contains bio balls, ceramic noodles, eheim sphere media, filter wool and Japanese filter mat. I added 1200g of fluval zeolite. My questions are is this a good idea to prevent ammonia spikes, and can I recharge the zeolite using a strong salt solution even if it doesn't say I can in the instructions?

Cheers

Rob

[Buccal]

You don't need zeolite, it's a dangerous game,,, I've got much experience with zeolite experimentation.

Zeolite acts like a sponge sucking in ammonia and other various stuff.

Once it's fully loaded it leaches back out causing contamination spikes if you don't recharge or replace in time.

When to recharge or replace ?????,,, you tell me how long a peice of string is.

How many fish you got ? How big are they ? How many times a day you feed ? Do you over feed ? How many water changes in a month ? Percentage of water changes ?,,,,,,,,, tell me all these and I still couldn't answer.

Zeolite is good to use as temporary or emergency measure and have on standby.

It will extract unwanted things from the water fast like excess medication or emergency severe ammonia spikes.

If you leave it in, it exhausts very quickly and leaches nasties back out.

It will exhaust more than five times the time before your filter is needed to clean even in best circumstances.

A mate of mine didn't listen to me with his big stingray display tank, all was good for a few months, then severe ammo spikes and he lost most of his fish.

Zeolite has its place,,, but only as a fast acting temporary tool.

People using zeolite as a fine substrate will usually change it often and is a lot of work.

But the real fine stuff can leach back out and find a happy medium where it cancels out what's going in and out, thus only becoming a substrate only, with no benefit.

It's simple to set a filter up correctly, and working correctly without over feeding and no decaying dead fish you'll never have ammonia problems.

Good filter,,,, understand the nitrogen cycle,,,, thats all that's needed.

[robdog013]

I already have a good filtration system and added the zeolite as an additional filter media. Iam not entirely going to rely on zeolite as a sole filtration media. The zeolite only represents probably an eighth of my total filtration media

[Buccal]

It will exhaust pretty quick then.

All it really does is steels away the ammonia from the beneficial bacteria that wants to convert it.

I originally trialed experiments to minimize generation of nitrates.

A decent amount of zeolite is needed to see such effects.

Using a small amount of zeolite like that would exhaust in a week or two steeling ammonia away from the normal processes.

After that it wouldn't do anything for the occasions of ammo spikes.

It would just uptake a bit and dump out a bit,,, uptake a bit and dump out a bit,,, and keep going like that.

If you had a serious crash and a ammo spike and all your fish were suffering,,,,, then a large portion of fresh zeolite would fix the problem for 4-5 days before replenishment is needed.

Think of it like carbon,,,,, it's very effective and does a terrific job, but it's so good it exhausts and fills up quickly, but once overloaded it starts to leach out again.

[robdog013]

Wish I could paste a photo of my sump from my I phone