How often do I clean my Filter?

[CleverBs]

How often should I clean my Fluval 405? Its been cycled for about 3 weeks

 

[E-rock]

It depends on your bio load. But the key is not to change all the media at once. You can wait a while. Carbon needs to be changed the most often.

 

[CleverBs]

not thinking about changing just cleaning, washing it out, clearing out any that could be effecting the flow.

 

[Dale_I]

I wouldn't clean it for the first two months. Let the bio-mass get a good foothold. I clean mine once a month. I just rinse out the foam strip pre-filters and then remove the media boxes, open them individually, and rinse them as well. I remove any broken or crumbing bio-rings (if you are using the ceramic type), and rinse out the bucket.

I'll then remove the holder for the pump impeller and rinse the impeller case out using my finger until I don't feel any "slime". I'll remove the impeller and do the same using a small bottle brush down the hole.

Put everything back together, plug it back in, prime it, and turn it on. If I'm slow it may take 10 minutes.

 

[eco23]

I clean my 405 about every 2 weeks. I fill up a bucket with tank water, swish around and remove debris from the foam inserts and Bio-Max, replace the poly-fil, remove and clean the impeller, and clean out the actual canister with an algae sponge and tap water. About once a month I break the whole thing down and clean the input and output hoses with tap water and a long handled brush (lots of gunk builds up in those things).

This works great for the hoses-
http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc...splay?langId=-1&storeId=10051&catalogId=10053

 

[Rokuzachi]

I clean my 405 about every 2 weeks. I fill up a bucket with tank water, swish around and remove debris from the foam inserts and Bio-Max, replace the poly-fil, remove and clean the impeller, and clean out the actual canister with an algae sponge and tap water. About once a month I break the whole thing down and clean the input and output hoses with tap water and a long handled brush (lots of gunk builds up in those things).

This is how I do it too. I run two filters on my main tank, so I alternate every week which one gets clean. It's amazing how much buildup I find between the two, and I don't even have a lot of fish, or particularly messy ones at that.

 

[CleverBs]

well I just cleaned mine and it was nasty had lots of grime in it so I just washed it all with tank water and my water is diffidently moving better again. I do have a heavily planted tank so maybe that makes it worse. also my water hasnt been very clear so I thought that may be a problem and I think it was contributing based on the color of the water when I was washing everything.