The bio media is designed to hold becteria for nitrogen cycling (well, not
complete but from ammonia-nitrite-nitrate). Bacteria housed in live rock
is designed to do the same thing. Some will claim the bio-media will end
acting as a nitrate factory. This kind of confuses me because that is what
they are designed to do (convert ammonia to nitrate) and when they are
releasing nitrate into the water they blame the bio-media (?) If you want to
look at completing the nitrogen cycle (nitrate-nitrogen/oxygen), you would
be looking at adding a deep sand bed (DSB). I have recently learned this
topic is up for debate as well. I don't believe the debate is about whether
or not the DSB will complete the nitrogen cycle, but more about things like
how deep it should be, whether it should be fine sand or coarse aragonite
and things of that nature.

Anyway, IMO I don't think you can have too much bio-media, just as you can't
have too much live rock (I myself use the berlin method of just LR and
protien skimming). The becteria will only churn out as much nitrates as it
has fuel (or ammonia or nitrites) to produce it from. If you have too little
bio-media and you add a bunch of fish or other ammonia producing critters
and your bio-media can't keep up, then that would be bad, exposing your tank
inhabitants to high levels of ammonia and most likley killing them.

Of course this is from all the research I had done back in the late 90's and
I haven't looked into any new practices since then. I have just been
applying what I have learned and it seems to work for me.

I am curious to see what the view points of today are.

Greg

"Rick" wrote in message
om...
Is it possible to have to much bio-load? I currently have a 55 gal
setup using 2 ehiems (2015) 1 is complety full of media and the 2nd
half full of media and mesh filter.

I'm also using a Bac-Pack II skimmer which also uses some mesh in the
resivor?

The best part is my test results for ammonia 0% Nitrate 0% Nitrite
0%. I have had 0% nitrate for going on almost 3 weeks now. Thats a
good thing.

What I want to do now is put maybe 15-20 lbs live rock, would this be
over kill on the bio-load? I would think is all a good thing.