The aim of this work was to develop a better understanding of a floating medium in a mechanical filtration mode. The experiments were carried out using a commonly available polystyrene floating medium filter with the grain size of 1 mm. A sand medium filter with the similar grain size was also tested for the comparison. A short-term trial of 2 h and a long-term of 20 days filtration times were conducted with three custom manufactured pressurized filters of 161. The filters were operated under three different configurations: (i) upflow with floating media (UFMF), (ii) downflow with floating media (DFMF) and (iii) downflow with a sand medium (DSF). The results of the long-term trial indicated that at a flow rate of 22 m/h, the UFMF and DSF had similar solid removal capacity with an average total suspended solids (TSS) removal efficiency of 60%. The DFMF could only remove 33% of TSS. However, during the short-term trial, TSS removal efficiency of the UFMF was better compared to the DSF (e.g., 71%, 56% and 57% of TSS removal in UFMF compared to 66%, 49% and 41% in the DSFF at the flow rates of 20, 25 and 31 m/h, respectively). The energy requirements of each filter were compared by measuring the pressure differential across each filter. The long-term trial indicated that the UFMF had a significantly less pressure differential (44 kPa) compared to the DSF (80 kPa) (p < 0.001). This was further confirmed that at different flow rates whereby the DSF displayed higher pressure differentials for filtration rates at 350, 450, 550 and 800 l/h. The study indicated that floating medium filter was better and more applicable to recirculating aquaculture systems than conventional pressurized sand filter. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.