Approaching the 1 year mark on my tanks

[jo3olous]

Yay my tanks have been running for almost 1 year, and maybe it's time to actually stock the tanks with fish *SUPERSMIL

But first, in my 20G my filter is starting to disintegrate and it's clogging the water flow. I've cleaned it a couple times over the year already. Is it time to put in a new filter pad? Also how to keep the bacteria from the current pad and get it to the next?

Discuss!

 

[sombunya]

What kind of filter do you have?

I just did some filter maintenance on all four of my tanks. I was thinking about starting a thread on the subject.

 

[chrispar0323]

you should totally do that

 

[seastaar88]

Swish the filter pad in tank water from a water change or clean dechlorinated water. No reason to actually replace it. Replacing it will disrupt your bacteria colony (and cause you to go into a mini cycle) - the majority of your bacteria are on the filter media. But if you say it's disintigrating... I guess now would be the time to change it since you don't even have fish in the tank. It takes a couple of weeks for bacteria to reestablish on new filter media. I suggest you just get a bag of filter floss for your filter. I haven't had to replace the filter floss I run in my two hang-on-back filters in over three years. (I also run a rena xp2 canister filter).

 

[ValRasbora]

What I do is let a lot of the gunk drip onto the new pads.

 

[FroggyFox]

yeah, if there's no way to clean it off and make it continue to work you should do what you can to run the new media with the old media for awhile to see if you can get it to transfer as much bacteria as possible to the new.

In general I agree with seastaar, I dont replace anything unless it is seriously impeding water flow after cleaning it less than a week ago. Some types of media lend themselves to be more thoroughly cleaned than others...like say my sponges in my eheim canister...I can take it out and literally wring it and rinse it under the faucet when it gets real bad and I've never replaced it...whereas some of the cartridges you just cant wring them to really clean them if you need to.

 

[seastaar88]

That's the thing I like most about my canister filter - the sponges - downright indestructable!