nirbhao
Aquarium Advice Addict
Seriously these things clog up too quickly.
We have two tanks with three filters between them- a 10 gallon with an AquaClear 20 and a 29 gallon with an AquaClear 30 and heavily modified Aqueon QuietFlow 10. The 10 gallon is where our pregnant female guppies live, so we have a sponge over the filter intake to keep fry from being sucked up. In the 29 gallon, after a harlequin got her tail caught in the intake, we added a sponge prefilter to one and have tied a media bag over the intake of the other. That was meant to be short-term. Aside from a media bag held on to a filter intake with a hair band being ugly, I'm not confident that it protects our critters as well as the sponge.
Whenever I do water changes, I rinse the media bag and squeeze these sponges just like I do for the sponges inside the filters. However, that's not enough anymore. The past few weeks, the sponges inside the filters with the prefilters are completely clean. Flow is usually not an issue.
This week it became an issue. We went to my parents' house and were gone about three days. When we got home, the AquaClear 20 had only a trickle. That's way too fast for clogging!
How do I protect tails and tiny critters without compromising my filters? And how much beneficial bacteria is in those sponges that will need to be replaced if I remove them?
We have two tanks with three filters between them- a 10 gallon with an AquaClear 20 and a 29 gallon with an AquaClear 30 and heavily modified Aqueon QuietFlow 10. The 10 gallon is where our pregnant female guppies live, so we have a sponge over the filter intake to keep fry from being sucked up. In the 29 gallon, after a harlequin got her tail caught in the intake, we added a sponge prefilter to one and have tied a media bag over the intake of the other. That was meant to be short-term. Aside from a media bag held on to a filter intake with a hair band being ugly, I'm not confident that it protects our critters as well as the sponge.
Whenever I do water changes, I rinse the media bag and squeeze these sponges just like I do for the sponges inside the filters. However, that's not enough anymore. The past few weeks, the sponges inside the filters with the prefilters are completely clean. Flow is usually not an issue.
This week it became an issue. We went to my parents' house and were gone about three days. When we got home, the AquaClear 20 had only a trickle. That's way too fast for clogging!
How do I protect tails and tiny critters without compromising my filters? And how much beneficial bacteria is in those sponges that will need to be replaced if I remove them?
