briseymo
Aquarium Advice Apprentice
So I recently purchased a canister filter for the aquarium I am fixing up, but I don't have any media for the three trays. Which medium should go in which tray?
See, on other forums I have been getting different advice. One said to do biological filtration in the top two, but mechanical in the last. Another said to use activated carbon in one of the trays.
Everyone is going to give you a different answer.
My take on this is that it takes a surprisingly small amount of biological media to manage the bioload of a tank. Just look at how a single HOB filter cartridge can filter a whole tank. Even filling just one tray with biological filtration media is a ton of media compared to a HOB filter.
The extra mechanical filtration will give your water a cleaner look.
As for carbon, the only time it's needed in aquariums is for removal of medications. If you want some sort of chemical filtration I would suggest going with purigen instead.
+1 to Mebbid's comments though I personally go for as much bio media as possible, just because, well why not. More bb the merrier in in my opinion. I would suggest that you consider the flow of water through the filter and place the mechanical before the bio, just so that the bio media has the cleanest source it can.
I look at it like this. The beneficial bacteria population is limited by the amount of fish in the tank. The bacteria will never grow past this limit because it will just starve.
With that in mind, if you have a full bio load of bacteria in your tank, adding extra biological filtration media isn't going to add any more bacteria because of the limit of ammonia production.
In the order from water input to water output:
- Mechanical filtration
- Filtration pad (the blue one with big holes)
- Bacterial media (bio)
- Polish filtration pad (filter moss)
I hope this help better:
Water flows from bottom to top.
So I recently purchased a canister filter for the aquarium I am fixing up, but I don't have any media for the three trays. Which medium should go in which tray?
Not always though, it depends on the filter. The fx5 manual says the bottom layer is the last the water goes through before returning.
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