Aquarium filter accessories Micromec

The quality of the filtering material largely determines the effectiveness of an aquarium filter! Most aquarium filters are already equipped upstream with sponges as the filtering medium. Sponges actually have a fairly large surface area that, over time, will be populated by beneficial bacteria that help break down pollutants. To enhance the effectiveness of a filter, one can replace the sponges with a special glass-ceramic filtering medium (JBL SintoMec and JBL MicroMec). The glass-ceramic medium has a surface area approximately 10 times greater than that of the sponge, thus providing even more space for bacteria to degrade the pollutants in the aquarium water. In the automotive field, this would be referred to as "tuning" = more performance! What is glass-ceramic? If you melt (sinter) very small glass beads, you'll end up with a large piece of glass. However, if you mix the glass beads with salt beforehand, the resulting piece of glass will be streaked with salt. If it is then washed, an infinite number of tiny channels will be created in the glass. The glass-ceramic filter media from JBL therefore have a gigantic (internal) surface area that can be colonised by bacteria that break down pollutants.

Nitrate degradation: nitrates are only broken down into nitrogen gas by bacteria in the absence of oxygen and in the presence of carbon (C). This process (denitrification) can take place under ideal conditions within the glass-ceramic media JBL SintoMec and JBL MicroMec. When is JBL MicroMec useful and when is JBL SintoMec? For smaller filter volumes, the smaller medium JBL MicroMec is the most suitable due to space constraints. For larger ones, partly due to the higher water flow, a coarser medium with holes, like the JBL SintoMec, will be better suited. The finer material of the JBL MicroMec could clog up more quickly.