A night of underfiltering?

[Guest]

Would it be okay once a week to turn the gph on my 304 down to about 50gph just for the night? That way my UV would get the maximum dwell time and everything in the water would get killed. In the morning I would turn it back up to 260gph and the water would be completely sterile. Sound okay?

 

[Guest]

ummm...i would just like to say that your water will never be completely sterile, sterile means free from any living organism (bacteria, viruses... etc) im sorry, i just wanted to correct you on your wording. Maybe you meant purified.

 

[BrianNY]

Actually Tony, that sounds like an excellent idea to me. As long as you have water flowing through the filter you're providing O2 to the nitifying bacterial colony.

 

[asaint]

I'll second that it will work. If it were me, I would probably forget to turn the Fluval back up in the morning. Much too fuzzy in the morning to remember little chores like that.

I'd end up hanging the turbo twist on the back of the tank and plumbing in a cheap powerhead. That way I wouldn't have to keep turning the fluval up and down.

best of luck,
asaint

 

[Guest]

My beautiful snowball pleco was found dead today. Not sure if there is any correlation, but it seems suspicious. Needless to say, my filter goes 100% from now on unless I see an illness in the tank.