H0pefulDad
Fish Fanatic
So. Filters, right? I have a couple of questions regarding them.
It's been about a month now of me unsuccessfully attempting to cycle my new 10 gallon tank, and I've had my filter running the entire time. It's an Aqueon QuietFlow Internal Power Filter, and of course has the appropriate media. I took the filter cartridge out today, and it's all brown colored. I tried what I heard about rinsing it with old tank water after a water change to preserve any bacteria that have settled there, but it didn't look any better afterwards. Even though I haven't had a fish in this tank yet, do you think I should put a new cartridge in by this point?
As a followup, there's some other media in my filter, let me show you:
I couldn't get a very good picture, but I'm sure you can see the black spongy material in there as well. This is the filter model meant for keeping shrimp and small fish from getting sucked in too, so there's also some of that material by the intake. I'll take another picture:
(Yes that's cat hair, don't ask me how it got in there.)
I know this is the medium is for catching larger particles of things, and I was wondering if I should replace it too?
And my final question, is how exactly I should go about replacing my filter cartridges. I know you're supposed to replace them every month, but I also know it's not as simple as taking the old one out and popping a new one in, once again because you don't want to get rid of all the bacteria that live there. I've tried looking for one way to replace them while keeping the bacteria, but I've heard a lot of conflicting methods. I mentioned before that I'm struggling to cycle this tank, and I don't want to undo any progress I've made, so please tell me if you know how to properly replace a filter cartridge without interrupting the nitrogen cycle.
It's been about a month now of me unsuccessfully attempting to cycle my new 10 gallon tank, and I've had my filter running the entire time. It's an Aqueon QuietFlow Internal Power Filter, and of course has the appropriate media. I took the filter cartridge out today, and it's all brown colored. I tried what I heard about rinsing it with old tank water after a water change to preserve any bacteria that have settled there, but it didn't look any better afterwards. Even though I haven't had a fish in this tank yet, do you think I should put a new cartridge in by this point?
As a followup, there's some other media in my filter, let me show you:
I couldn't get a very good picture, but I'm sure you can see the black spongy material in there as well. This is the filter model meant for keeping shrimp and small fish from getting sucked in too, so there's also some of that material by the intake. I'll take another picture:
(Yes that's cat hair, don't ask me how it got in there.)
I know this is the medium is for catching larger particles of things, and I was wondering if I should replace it too?
And my final question, is how exactly I should go about replacing my filter cartridges. I know you're supposed to replace them every month, but I also know it's not as simple as taking the old one out and popping a new one in, once again because you don't want to get rid of all the bacteria that live there. I've tried looking for one way to replace them while keeping the bacteria, but I've heard a lot of conflicting methods. I mentioned before that I'm struggling to cycle this tank, and I don't want to undo any progress I've made, so please tell me if you know how to properly replace a filter cartridge without interrupting the nitrogen cycle.