Filter Maintenance

[crockwood]

After all the new 'scaping I did yesterday, my water is still slightly cloudy and I'm sure the filters are full of crap from moving all the substrate around. I'm new to having canisters so I'm curious. How long do you wait in between maintenance? How often should I change the fine floss? How often do you clean out your coarse sponge?

The coarse sponge will be a pain. I'm running an Ehiem 2215 and 2213 on the same tank. The media from top to bottom is Ehiem Mech, Coarse sponge, Ehiem SubstratPro, fine floss. So I have to dig out my bio balls every time I need to clean the sponge. Grr. Now I know why people like the Filstar's baskets.

 

[mattrox]

I don't have Ehiem filters, but I rinse out the sponges and change fiter floss when the flow rate slows down.

 

[crockwood]

Hrmmm, ok that's fair enough, but how do you know the flow has slowed? I don't have any kind of indicator other than looking at the top of the water. That's inaccurate at best lol.

I'm mainly trying to decide how to get this **** water to clear up.

Just did a test to double check for a mini-cycle after the substrate switch and everything is fine, as I anticipated.

pH = ~7.6 (its always this high, idk why. Tap water tests at about a 6.6)
Ammonia = 0ppm
Nitrites = 0ppm
Nitrates = 0ppm

 

[mfdrookie516]

I rinse my canisters out every other week... I have two on my 150g, and I just do one one week, the other the next. Just take a bucket and drain some tank water in it, rinse out the media by swishing it around, squeeze the sponges out several times, and thats all there is to it. once every other month or so i'll clean my impeller to make sure everything is fairly clean in there too.

 

[mctypething]

I clean my canister once a month. I have a Marineland C-360. I replace all of the media except the bio balls and ceramic rings every other month, and just rinse them out really good between months. I also thoroughly rinse out all of the baskets because I've noticed a lot of fish poop hides in there. I've found that cleaning a canister is extremely easy.

I think it's pretty important to change out the water in the canister also, those things can become nitrate factories.

 

[Andrewz00]

I clean my canister once a month. I have a Marineland C-360. I replace all of the media except the bio balls and ceramic rings every other month, and just rinse them out really good between months. I also thoroughly rinse out all of the baskets because I've noticed a lot of fish poop hides in there. I've found that cleaning a canister is extremely easy.

I think it's pretty important to change out the water in the canister also, those things can become nitrate factories.

not sure what you mean by "change out the water in the canister".... water is constantly flowing through the canister, if you have water just sitting in there, the filter is broken!

 

[mctypething]

I mean pour out the water that's in there and replace it with clean water.

 

[Andrewz00]

i hope your not using straight tap water to refill the canister... i would highly suggest refilling it with "clean" tank water....

 

[mctypething]

I just connect the canister back to the tank and let it drain the tank water to fill back up. Then I top off the tank with dechlorinated water from the tap. Same as any water change. Haven't had any issues so far.

 

[Andrewz00]

phew.. ok i think i just misunderstood your first post....