fluval 306, how often do tubes need to be cleaned normally?

[ashleynicole]

How often do you have to take and clean the hoses for your canister filters? I have a fluval 306 and I didn't realize I would have to take down all the tubing and clean it out so frequently. What a pain! I miss my HOB filter at this point.

At first I was excited my maintenance was fairly simple. Every week I flip up my aquastop valve, take the filter to the sink, rinse the sponges and biomedia, hook it back up and its good to go. I periodically pull the intake out of the tank and clean around the little ball valve thats supposed to keep from clogging but gets a lot of gunky buildup.

Then I noticed after a couple of months the flow was decreased and when I primed the tank a bunch or brown slimy gunk got blown into the water. The filter filtered it out but my water was cloudy and when I tested I had a spike of nitrItes the next day. I detoxified with prime since id just done a water change and monitored it and everything leveled back out. No fish were harmed. But I also took the tubing down at this point and cleaned them out. There was so much gunk. Brown slimey gunk.

So now basically every two months I have to take EVERYTHING down and flush out all the tubes and it is a huge pain. Is this normal? Are there any better options?

 

[Ian086]

Yeah HOBs are so much easier to maintain. I have to clean my tubes out about the same, every two months or so. The tubes on my canister are straight, so they are a bit easier to clean than fluval tubes, still a pain though. One of the downsides to canisters I suppose.....I use a tool I bought in a plumbing store. It's basically a rigid steel rod, about 4ft long, comes in sections with a fairly stiff bristle brush. Extra extensions can be added to it. It basically looks like a small chimney swipe. Just run it in the tube from each end a few times and that's it. It only takes a few minutes to actually clean the tubes but it's all the hassle of taking down the tubes and re-attaching everything afterwards. Sorry but I don't know of any other options.....