ciantarah
Aquarium Advice Apprentice
I have a 29 gal tank that is about 6 months old with live plants. Whenever I test, there's no ammonia and no nitrites, and the nitrates are under 40 ppm. I do PWC's every 1-2 weeks. However, I have never bought a new filter cartridge for my tank. I washed the cartridge and the filter out a couple times, and after both cleanings some of my fish died, although I did not see correlating spikes in ammonia or nitrites. Now I am understandably leery of cleaning the filter at all.
I opened the filter up today to check and see if my missing vampire shrimp had somehow stowed away in it (she hadn't) and found a bunch of tiny snails inside... and now I am wondering what I should do. I've seen a couple of the little buggers in my tank so far, but otherwise none.
Should I clean it out? Should I get a new filter cartridge? In normal circumstances, should I ever clean the filter?
I opened the filter up today to check and see if my missing vampire shrimp had somehow stowed away in it (she hadn't) and found a bunch of tiny snails inside... and now I am wondering what I should do. I've seen a couple of the little buggers in my tank so far, but otherwise none.
Should I clean it out? Should I get a new filter cartridge? In normal circumstances, should I ever clean the filter?