Re: biomedia in planted tanks

[Joe Reiter <jreiter at bigfoot_com>]

Okay, with all this talk lately about biomedia in a planted tank, I'm 
beginning to wonder if my nifty setup is perhaps not so nifty.  I have 
an Eheim 2128 running my 55 gallon tank, and the filter has two entire 
trays filled with Eheim biomedia.  (about 2 liters or so?)  This equates 
to a lot of biomedia for such a relatively small tank.  (The 2128 is a 
bit oversized for my tank, but I just turn the flow rate down so the 
high flow doesn't create chaos in the tank.)

In my fully planted tank, could this large amount of biomedia be bad? 
It seems that everything I've ever heard is that you basically can't 
have too much bio-filtration, so this whole thread caught me a bit off 
guard.

Have I been led astray?  Should I perhaps remove some of the biomedia? 
I like the idea of having lots of biomedia, as that will easily prevent 
ammonia or nitrite problems for my fish, but I don't want it to make 
life any tougher for my plants.
-joe