Filter Floss

[KTpoopenstein]

I have a whisper 40 filter on my tank and have run out of the filter cartridges. I haven't been using the charcoal, just the baggies for more fine filtration and the coarse foam block it comes with. I also have seachem matrix and purigen in there. It seems silly to me to buy another box of replacement filters for the whisper when I'm not actually using the charcoal, so what do y'all suggest for a filter wool? I don't have a ton of storage space so something that doesn't only come in huge quantities would be great!

 

[Mebbid]

I would just keep a filter cartridge in there. You don't ever really want to change those as they hold all of your BB. The carbon in them is just fine to keep in the tank when its exhausted.

 

[KTpoopenstein]

As I understood it, the matrix I have in there also holds a ton of BB...isn't that the whole point? Same with the coarse foam. And everything I've seen on here about using charcoal was that it was really only necessary when trying to remove medications from the water. FWIW, I have had to actually get rid of the filter cartridges every time I've done a water change lately. They literally disintegrate. It hasn't made a bit of difference in my water chemistry. I would like something that lasts more than a few weeks.

 

[Mebbid]

Ahh, gotcha. I missed the seachem matrix part.

My favorite filter padding is the Rite Size brand filter media. It's a giant filter pad that you just cut to the size that you want. I only really worry about using floss for times when I have serious cloudiness in the water as it has to be changed out soo much.

 

[KTpoopenstein]

I just have the coarse foam in there right now (I realized I was out after I'd tossed the old filter bag) so I'll see how that goes. I've been having issues with brown algae again which has been clogging things up, but now that I have my nerites back in the tank (had a pest snail infestation and got a few assassins to take care of it and moved the nerites out temporarily) they're taking care of a lot of it. I've never had an issue with cloudiness really so maybe the foam is sufficient. We'll see.