HooKooDooKu
Aquarium Advice FINatic
If you don't want to bother running your filter with carbon, you can make ultra-cheap replacement filters for you Marineland Eclipse filters.
While I'm not sure about other sizes, for the Z filter used in the System 3, Corner 5, and Hex 5, just do the following:
Buy a Marinelane Rite-Size Bonded Filter Pad. This is a cut-to-fit filter that is about 12" wide and 18" long, double layered (blue x white), and cost about $5+.
Using an old Z filter, rip the blue polyfiber pad off and dump the charcoal. Now use this naked filter as a template. Notice that there are two sizes. There is one rectangle where the charcoal was, and the larger rectangle that was bonded to the polyfiber pad.
Using the old Z filter as a guide, cut out a piece of the Rite-Size filter to match the size of the smaller rectangle that held the charcoal. Place that in the bottom of the filter. Cut another piece out of the Rite-Size filter to match the size of the larger rectangle. Next, carefully seperate the blue layer from the white layer. Toss the while layer away and place the blue layer on top of the other filter pad already in the filter. (If you don't seperate the blue and white layers, the top pad will be too thick and could cause overflow of your filter.
To maintain a higher level of beneficial bacteria, change out only the top or only the bottom pad with a new one every two or so weeks.
From a single piece of $5 cut-to-fit filter, you can get about over a dozen replacement pads, and that assumes you throw away the while layer for the upper pad. If you keep the white layer as an additional replacement, a single $5 cut-to-fit filter will last more than a year if you replace one of the two pads every other week.
While I'm not sure about other sizes, for the Z filter used in the System 3, Corner 5, and Hex 5, just do the following:
Buy a Marinelane Rite-Size Bonded Filter Pad. This is a cut-to-fit filter that is about 12" wide and 18" long, double layered (blue x white), and cost about $5+.
Using an old Z filter, rip the blue polyfiber pad off and dump the charcoal. Now use this naked filter as a template. Notice that there are two sizes. There is one rectangle where the charcoal was, and the larger rectangle that was bonded to the polyfiber pad.
Using the old Z filter as a guide, cut out a piece of the Rite-Size filter to match the size of the smaller rectangle that held the charcoal. Place that in the bottom of the filter. Cut another piece out of the Rite-Size filter to match the size of the larger rectangle. Next, carefully seperate the blue layer from the white layer. Toss the while layer away and place the blue layer on top of the other filter pad already in the filter. (If you don't seperate the blue and white layers, the top pad will be too thick and could cause overflow of your filter.
To maintain a higher level of beneficial bacteria, change out only the top or only the bottom pad with a new one every two or so weeks.
From a single piece of $5 cut-to-fit filter, you can get about over a dozen replacement pads, and that assumes you throw away the while layer for the upper pad. If you keep the white layer as an additional replacement, a single $5 cut-to-fit filter will last more than a year if you replace one of the two pads every other week.
