"Dirty" water & Filter cleaning question

[sammybelle]

I've had a 55 gal tank running now for about a month. While all water parameters have been just fine, the water looks like it has a lot of "dust" now for the past several days. About 1 1/2 wks ago I tried cleaning the filter cartridges (pretty gunky now) by rinsing in old aquarium water, and squeezed out the sponge prefilter. The cartridges didn't seem to be much cleaner than when I started. I have an Aqueon 55/75 HOB. I was thinking about using a polyfiber filter pad instead of the carbon-filled cartridges for my filter. Would I be ok in discarding just one of the cartridges at this point? I would still have the one old cartridge, and the sponge prefilter to keep the BB, and I actually still have the old seeding filter material in my HOB filter that I originally used to cycle my tank. I'm just thinking all this old filter material is becoming ineffective and clouding my water. I don't think it's overfeeding...I have cut down, and just feed once a day using 1/2 to one whole algae wafer for bottom feeders and small amounts of flake food/frozen brine shrimp (on occasion). Thanks in advance!

 

[revchristinejday]

Dear Sammybelle,

One of my filters is a Aqueon 55 and I've never seen "dust." Does it acually seem to be particles or is it more like very fine bubbles? Sometimes one of my AC filters seems to produce a lot of very fine bubbles for a while after a water change...
To witch to just poly filter pad, I would just cut one out of the right size and stuff it in to one of the sides with the the old filter cartridge. Then after a month, remove both, cut the carbon out, but use the frame with the "new " filter pad. You can also stuff the rest of the reservoir of the Aqueon with bio max or ceramic rings, etc. to add to area for BB. It's noisy when restarting the filter, but works well.
Chris+