They all crumble. They are soft, to the point with some that even handling them by the edges will cause the edge to crush.

Handle with care, don't place them where they will be subject to being touched and they should be fine.

Charles

oh well that's kinda disappointing. I don't think it will last a year even without touching it

Mine is in perfect shape still but I did touch it after seeing this post it sure is soft.

It should not be that soft, if I am reading between the lines here correctly. Water flowing over it should not cause it to erode or crumble unless you have a jet hitting it. If the brick is crumbling just sitting in the water I would take some pictures and talk to Brightwell directly. They have incredible customer service.

Charles

Mine is just sitting in the sump. I purchased from JL and sent them a message. I'll wait to see if they respond. I'll also try brightwell if they don't respond

It will dissolve like my marine pure block did over a year's time, if the flow is to high around it.

If the biological media contains reactive sulfur then it must also eventually exhaust?

Similar product, I decided to experiment with the MarinePure 8x8x4" brick and two quarts of spheres with my Red Sea Reefer 250 build and so far I'm quite happy. It's difficult to say with any certainty how much of an effect them being present in my sump has on the phosphate and nitrate reduction.

Nutrient import…
- medium bioload, heavy fish feeding
- BRS reef chili and phytoplankton 2-3 times a week
- 3ml of Red Sea coran energy A & B daily.

Nutrient export…
- Bubble Magus NAC3.5 skimmer
- Chaeto
- 2 ml of Red Sea NOPO-X daily (started at 5ml when my system was new)
- 20% water changes bimonthly

All that said, I am able to maintain very low values of 0.02 PO4 and 0 NO3 – I'm currently working on elevating the NO3 to 0.3 ppm ideally. I've built my system with the main considerations of it being stable with little maintenance and simple and after a few months of messing around with different products I think it's finally working and I think the extra biological media has a sizable influence. It would however, be nice to see the results of someone implementing bio bricks to a mature system where variables were limited so the effect could be easier to measure. Also, after 5 months my brick shows no visible signs of degrading.

http://imgur.com/nvxVcEv
http://imgur.com/ADp8SPy

Pictures for reference. My overflow feeds into the rear, right chamber that is loaded about half way with MarinePure spheres – this is also where my carbon is dosed. From there, the water flows through the filter socks and into the larger chamber in the front. This front chamber houses my skimmer as well as a flock of macro algae that sits on a 8x8x4" Marinepure brick – spray bar was mounted to the end of my carbon reactor loop to aerate and keep the algae clear of detritus. Lastly, water flows from the front chamber over a baffle and into a bubble trap that houses more MarinePure spheres and into the return pump chamber.

Hope it doesn't turn into a block of gel after a few years .

Correct, the sulphur will be used up by the bacteria that perform anaerobic nitrate removal in the NOx brick. The Bio brick does not contain the sulphur and does not really do much nitrate removal.

Charles

Just thought I'd up this to see if people are still happy with it? I'm done with carbon dosing, my system seems to hate it. Are you guys still happy with the brick?