I am wanting some opinions from those of you who have been into the hobby longer than myself.
I have a marineland emperor 400 power filter on a 55gal aquarium. I recently moved all my fish and the filter from a 20gal tank into the 55gal. I needed to change my filter media because it was not passing water fast enough. I wanted to get as much bacteria into the new tank as I could so I put in new filter cartridges and placed the old ones inside the tank on top of the gravel. This worked because It has only been a couple of weeks and my ammonia and nitrite levels are zero.
In doing this, I noticed one thing. The fish cleaned my filter media, completely.
My question is, Will this do harm to my tank if I do this each time my media is dirty and just continue to reuse the cleaned ones? The cartridges are rather expensive.
Any help will be greatly appreciated.
I have a marineland emperor 400 power filter on a 55gal aquarium. I recently moved all my fish and the filter from a 20gal tank into the 55gal. I needed to change my filter media because it was not passing water fast enough. I wanted to get as much bacteria into the new tank as I could so I put in new filter cartridges and placed the old ones inside the tank on top of the gravel. This worked because It has only been a couple of weeks and my ammonia and nitrite levels are zero.
In doing this, I noticed one thing. The fish cleaned my filter media, completely.
My question is, Will this do harm to my tank if I do this each time my media is dirty and just continue to reuse the cleaned ones? The cartridges are rather expensive.
Any help will be greatly appreciated.