Bio Balls for ponds and aquariums

The Fish Works sells bulk bioballs for ponds and aquariums and other biological filtration media such as Japanese matting.

Bioballs and Japanese matting are good, lightweight biological filtration media, housing billions of beneficial bacteria.

Being lightweight, they are much easier to clean compared to rocks/scoria, which are heavy and rough on the hands. More importantly, they have a greater surface-area-to-volume ratio. This means that they house much more beneficial bacteria. This is the bacteria responsible for cleaning your fish pond or aquarium.

Pond bio balls can be kept in a pond filter box, where they must have water pumped through them.

Every pond is different, but we recommend bio balls for ponds that are large or heavily stocked with fish as they can deal with the high levels of waste produced by these fish.

We recommend that you build a filter box around 2% of the volume of the pond. The whole volume of the pond should be pumped through the box a minimum of two times per hour. This will ensure that each bio ball gets enough water flow and oxygen to allow the bacteria to thrive.

One advantage of building a pond filtration that uses bioballs is that, when properly designed, it may only need cleaning once per year. It can also, in some cases, reduce the need for UV filtration.

The time to design a filter box to house the bio balls for a pond is in the design phase of pond construction.

The Fish Works can help you design the right filter box to house the bioballs. We will also ensure that the filter is the correct size and fitted with the right pump to do the job.

The Biological Filtration process

Biological filtration utilises good bacteria found naturally in every pond to convert toxic nutrients (Nitrites and Ammonia) to Nitrates, through a process known as ‘nitrification’. Nitrates are low in toxicity and used by plants for growth. There are two types of bacteria responsible for this process, Nitrosomonas and Nitrobacter.

In most fishponds, there are not enough of these bacteria to keep up with the nutrients fish release into the pond. A simple way of increasing the quantity of beneficial bacterium has been found.

Nitrosomonas and Nitrobacter live on every surface of the pond, on the rocks, leaves, logs etc. So to increase the number of bacteria, we must provide them with a greater surface area to grow on. A filter box constructed with biological filter media will achieve this.

This biofilter media has a massive surface area to volume ratio. Meaning that water pumped through the filter box travels past many billions of good bacteria, all of which convert the nutrients to safer forms.

Biological Filtration is The Fish Works’ area of expertise. We have built filters for literally hundreds of fish ponds in NSW. Tailor-made to achieve crystal clear water and a healthy environment for fish to live and thrive in. Bioballs for ponds and aquariums are one of our favourite materials to work with!

For ready-made filtration units for ponds, please click here