Converting from salt water

[tenny]

hey guys,

I am looking at converting a 25 gallon salt water tank into a fresh water tank. I have a fluval 204 filter on it with activated carbon, polly wool, and some other thing in it that looks like coned shaped pieces of wood, i cant rememeber what they are called sorry.

Anyways wondering what I have to do to make the switch? can I just rinse everything out or do I need to buy all new media for the filter?

 

[Meredith]

I am sort of doing the same thing. I am going to get all new media. I also filled up my 30gallon tub with bleach water and ran the filter on that for a few hours. Then I ran fresh water through that. My next step will be to run fresh water with dechlor.

 

[tenny]

what is the point of using the bleach? wouldnt the chemicals harm the fish if there was any at all left over???

 

[Meredith]

yes they would, which is why I am rinsing so much and also rinsing with dechlor. The bleach is just to be sure that any nastiness that may be in the filter is cleaned out. I don't want to take any chances and I know that the bleach will kill and clean out anything harmful.

 

[malkore]

if the SW tank wasn't full of diseases, I'd skip the bleach treatment. Since SW bacteria can't survive in freshwater, there's no benefit to keeping your old filter media. I'd replace it. Poly wool and carbon should be replaced weekly, but honestly I'd skip the carbon in FW completely.

 

[tenny]

I did not know that the carbon had to be replaced that often... the salesman told me it should be fine for 5-6 MONTHS.

it's the bags of activated carbon for the fluval 204.

So your saying with the fluval 204 I should have nothing but pollywool in it? What about the sponges?

 

[TomK2]

Use new media, go with a basket of wool for extra mechanical, and then the remaining baskets with porous bio-media. Fluval, eheim, and seachem sell them. I son't think carbon helps much, except for being surface area for bacteria. The seachem porous media is the least expensive. Just clean the filter, and install the new media. Use some colonized FW media if you can get your hands on some. don't worry about SW bugs getting into the system, I would think that any SW pathogen would not survive a transfer into FW.

 

[Scottm]

The osmotic pressure chnge will break the walls of any SW bacteria left. so I wouldn't worry too much.