Cleaning filters

[Og Drogon]

I have a question , I have a aquaclear 110 filter for my freshwater tank. when I replace the the sponge,carbon,bio-rocks do I clean the hole filter including the plastic housing? In other word do I just change the media or take the filter out and clean the hole thing ???

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[KathyC]

I have a question , I have a aquaclear 110 filter for my freshwater tank. when I replace the the sponge,carbon,bio-rocks do I clean the hole filter including the plastic housing? In other word do I just change the media or take the filter out and clean the hole thing ???

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There is no need to clean the housing when you are changing media unless it is extremely dirty (so much so that you can see it). The 'slime' you may feel on the inside of the filter is actually bacteria, so no, you don't want to wipe that way.

BUT - you should not change ALL of those medias at the same time either! You want to leave at least 2-3 days between cleaning/changing the sponge and carbon to maintain your levels of bacteria - taking too much bacteria out at the same time can spike your ammonia level.
The bio-rings (ceramic stuff) should be gently rinsed in TANK water - not tap water to clean any detritus away from them.

AND...If you vacuum your gravel when doing water changes - you should NOT to that on the same day you change out any of the filter media - again so that your bacterial levels don't dip too far.

Best to do water changes every other week and attend to your filter on the weeks you are not doing the water changes.

It helps greatly with tank stability.

 

[Og Drogon]

Thanks Kathy I'm going to follow those steps cause I been doing everything on the same day and boy have I ran into Alot of problems ....I have been scared to do cleaning :-/



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[TRIGGERMAN]

Dav..if you look on the box of media it actually SAYS don't change all the media at once. As Kathy said this will effect your bacteria levels which are beneficial to the health of your fish. Think of it like antibodies inside humans and our immune system it is the same with fish. Not enough good bacteria they will have weak immune systems and are susceptible to more illnesses. Personally what I do is rinse the sponge and all media in a bucket of tank water and change out 1/2 of each except for the ceramic media (rings). That I change maybe every 6 months.

What size tank? and What is currently in there?

 

[seldin]

I have a marine setup, but it should be the same for freshwater. I take the sponge and rinse it weekly in my water change output bucket. I get a lot of cr@p weekly. This was recommended from an old-timer and I think ( with all the stuff coming out ), it is a good idea.

One other thing I do, this is on my own, is actually, take all of the media in filter and rinse that that in my output water change bucket also. I was surprised how much detris collects on this also.

This should not lose bacteria, because you are using your original source water.

 

[KathyC]

I have a marine setup, but it should be the same for freshwater. I take the sponge and rinse it weekly in my water change output bucket. I get a lot of cr@p weekly. This was recommended from an old-timer and I think ( with all the stuff coming out ), it is a good idea.

One other thing I do, this is on my own, is actually, take all of the media in filter and rinse that that in my output water change bucket also. I was surprised how much detris collects on this also.

This should not lose bacteria, because you are using your original source water.

Not necessarily a good idea in a FW set-up. There are far fewer surfaces for bacteria to colonize in a FW tank (think no live rock, no sump, skimmer, reactors...etc).

The water itself holds very little bacteria, so yes, if you rinse weekly even in tank water, you are losing a good deal of bacteria and CAN make the tank unstable.

The purpose of using tank water to rinse the sponge and carbon and even the ceramic rings is to NOT kill the bacteria living in them by the use of tap water which is loaded with chlorine and all sorts of other crap.

 

[TRIGGERMAN]

MY cichlid tank has live rock :tongue1:

 

[Donewiththisplace]

I would take the whole pump unit apart, clean the sponge and media along with that slime off the inside of the unit like once a month and never had a problem. Running a 55 gallon (fresh) on an aquaclear now for about 10 years and never had a problem. Clean the gravel and glass too all at the same time. And approx. 10 gallons of water on top of it.

Live stock was congo tetras, angel fish and gouramis and a catfish.

Taking it slow is probably the wayh to go but I never had a problem.