Filter Cleaning

[chrischeyne]

hi i have a jewel rio 300 with a big internal filter with 4 sponges (1 carbon sponge) and a Cirax Bioflow.whats the best way of cleaning it all together or part by part?

 

[anwhyte]

hi i have a jewel rio 300 with a big internal filter with 4 sponges (1 carbon sponge) and a Cirax Bioflow.whats the best way of cleaning it all together or part by part?

clean the top (white sponge) every week or so, or replace it, depending how ragged it is, the black 2nd one can be cleaned every week or so (always in tank water), the bottom 2 sponges can be ignored for months, but eventually you can rinse them out in tank water as well.

 

[erk628]

Make sure you use tank water! Just grab a bucket siphon some tank water in it put your filter media in there and wash them out. Never clean your filter media in unconditoned tap water the cholorine will kill the bacteria

 

[anwhyte]

Make sure you use tank water! Just grab a bucket siphon some tank water in it put your filter media in there and wash them out. Never clean your filter media in unconditoned tap water the cholorine will kill the bacteria

think he meant chlorine, rather than cholorine.

 

[erk628]

Yes sorry couldn't figure out how to spell it and I'm at work on my phone and I don't have the spell check option.

 

[fatheadminnow]

Click in my sig where it says "How to clean you filter media, video!"

I made a video a while ago going through the steps on how to clean your filter media.

-FHM

 

[chrischeyne]

cheers guy the video looks great just watching it now thanx

 

[ian]

how old is the tank? If its over six weeks, i would remove the carbon filter and replace it with a course sponge filter, unless your treating your fish with meds. There is also a nitrate sponge in there as well, i would change that for a fine sponge, thats if you haven't had a problem with nitrates.

 

[waterdrop]

Hi chrischeyne, I noticed in your other thread that you said you had already cycled the tank. Did you use fish-in or fishless method and how many days did it take if I may ask?

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Squid]

how old is the tank? If its over six weeks, i would remove the carbon filter and replace it with a course sponge filter, unless your treating your fish with meds. There is also a nitrate sponge in there as well, i would change that for a fine sponge, thats if you haven't had a problem with nitrates.

I used to have one of the juwel internal filters, but can't rememeber what the carbon fitler sponge looked like. Is it not like one of the course sponges anyway??? so if the carbon is no longer active, wouldn't it just act like a normal blue coarse sponge, and therefore would be ok left in?

Squid

 

[waterdrop]

how old is the tank? If its over six weeks, i would remove the carbon filter and replace it with a course sponge filter, unless your treating your fish with meds. There is also a nitrate sponge in there as well, i would change that for a fine sponge, thats if you haven't had a problem with nitrates.

I used to have one of the juwel internal filters, but can't rememeber what the carbon fitler sponge looked like. Is it not like one of the course sponges anyway??? so if the carbon is no longer active, wouldn't it just act like a normal blue coarse sponge, and therefore would be ok left in?

Squid

Good option to point out Squid. I think its often underappreciated that carbon will also serve as a non-ideal but decent biological media even after its chemical function has long ago ceased (typically after the 3 days it takes for it to "fill up" chemically.) From the things I've read its thought to not provide as good or as high a quantity of surface area as ceramics or sponges can but its not terrible. Unfortunately, one of the other problems with it from a biological media standpoint is that it by nature will slowly but surely crumble and lose bits of itself and the bacteria clinging to it from the actions of water movement through the filter and from filter cleanings. By contrast, ceramics do this hardly at all and sponges only do it slowly over years. Of course the crumbling loss may not really lessen the bacteria all that much as one could picture their colonies re-growing on surfaces newly opened up when a piece breaks off and floats away, so I suppose we don't really know in truth. Anyway, the bottom line of the suggestion is that that carbon sponge would not be so bad a biological media that it couldn't be left in until some later time when the OP wanted to move on to new media in that spot.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[chrischeyne]

Hi chrischeyne, I noticed in your other thread that you said you had already cycled the tank. Did you use fish-in or fishless method and how many days did it take if I may ask?

~~waterdrop~~

about 10 days as i used to have gold fish in the tank before i left the filter full of water from the gold fish and just change 2 sponges i was watching the water closely and the no2 went up to 5 mg/l and then drop off over the next 3 days to 0 so relly i did not do eather way as i still had the filter full of goldfish poo so this started the cycle
chris

 

[chrischeyne]

how old is the tank? If its over six weeks, i would remove the carbon filter and replace it with a course sponge filter, unless your treating your fish with meds. There is also a nitrate sponge in there as well, i would change that for a fine sponge, thats if you haven't had a problem with nitrates.

I used to have one of the juwel internal filters, but can't rememeber what the carbon fitler sponge looked like. Is it not like one of the course sponges anyway??? so if the carbon is no longer active, wouldn't it just act like a normal blue coarse sponge, and therefore would be ok left in?

Squid

in the past i just left the carbon sponge in for about 2 mounths and just take it out all together by witch time the filter strong so it does note relly need the carbon any more.i have in the past also replaced it with jbl product base with clay and it just made the water brown so i just take it out now. i put filter balls in it and it does not do any thing better so i just take it out all together.the problem that i have had in the past i used to change the whole lot in 1 go and this in turn takes away all the bactrea.and i also used to wash all the filter stuff with tap water so this also killed the bactrea aswell so i wonted to know the best way of cleaning it? as befroe i used to lose fish every time i changed the filter stuff and then wonder why. i was a bit stupid about this as i did not buy the fish tank in the frist place i got it form a raffle at the local pet shop in aid of the rspca. hence i was chucked in at the deep end. chris

 

[waterdrop]

Chris,

It sounds to me like you have climbed the steep learning curve pretty well. In my opinion it is not at all "stupid" to make the mistake of replacing too much filter media in one go or of cleaning too much with tap water. This comes from a simple lack of basic information and the manufacturers and retail stores are so intensely caught up in their cycle of greed that they constantly help to perpetuate this problem rather than help to be part of the solution.

One of the simple principles that will help you in future decisions about media changes in any filter is this: Try not to remove more than 1/3 (one third) of the total biomedia (or total overall media if you can't figure out which media is serving as which) at any one go. If you removed that much and wanted for some reason to do it again then it would be smart to wait a month before removing another 1/3.

This principle assumes a mature filter (one that's been running for six months or longer.) If the filter is less mature than six months then it would be much less desirable to be removing or otherwise swapping out or over-cleaning media.

Achieving what I would call "experienced" status with freshwater filters would mean understanding all the differences between the basic three media types (biological media, chemical media and mechanical media) and gaining a feeling for the relative amount of each of those three functions that a given type of media is likely to achieve. It also means an understanding of the functions the physical filter itself provides, like media volume, media separation with trays etc., flow rate, difference between external flow rate and internal media bed flow rate, maintenance convenience features like input/output shutoff valves, quick release blocks, built-in primers and other stuff like that.

All that sort of info can be learned here on our forum via searches and discussions but it takes time. The hardware section has more or less the final word on the details but for beginners it can sometimes be a bit harder getting stuff out of the hardware guys since they get bored with the beginner stuff. A tremendous amount can be learned via "homework" searches on TFF, but of course that can feel a bit more lonely than a more current discussion and of course then there are those that just hope someone is going to spoon feed it all as soon as they ask, lol. Anyway you've been right in keeping your goldfish filter media going and you've learned a number of things, so keep up the good work!

~~waterdrop~~