ALL bio media FX5? Even replacing the foam?

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
C

Chicxulub

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Aug 29, 2009
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I know a lot of guys on here take the foam out of their FX5s to increase flow rate, but I was wondering if it would be effective to fill all of that extra space occupied by the foam in the FX5 with extra bio media? I have an AC110 and a Magnum 350 on my tank strictly for mechanical and I think they do the majority of the polishing anyway, when I had the FX5 by it's self the water always looked a little cloudy. I was considering getting a second FX5 and loading it down with all that extra bio.

Has anyone tried this?

Do you guys think it would work?
 
I would atleast leave 1 filter in just so none of the gunk gets through to the bio media. That could cause havoc with your levels if food gets stuck in your bio media.
 
I guess I should be more specific lol...

I am aware that bio can colonize any porous substance, and I know that my foam gets a decent colonization from when I occasionally clean the filter. More specifically, I was wondering if the filter would be more efficacious as a bio filtration agent if I was to replace the foam inserts with a large quantity of Biomax. If I recall correctly, the total capacity for the FX5's foam trays is 25L, as opposed to just 8L in the center trays.

Edit: and obviously the 3x increase in media would help, I am wondering if there are any concerns or drawbacks to not having the mechanical filtration in place. Strollo22 brought up a good point that I had not considered.
 
I would leave some kind of mechanical media even between trays in case of some object stopping or clogging the impeller. The standard flow rate w/ mechanical is better than NO flow at all w/ a jammed impeller.
 
IMO there's no reason to have 1 filter for 1 individual aspect. Even if you have 1 filter that does just mechanical, it's still not going to prevent the intake on the other filter from sucking in gunk. The only recommendation I would make if you want to do bio only would to just put a very fine intake sponge over the intake so that nothing gets into the canister itself. This way you have all trays with Bio with no worries of gunk. You would just have to clean that intake sponge filter quite often to prevent blockage.


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Fx5 holds 1.5 gals of bio media, that will imo support 400+ gallons or a huge bio load. So if all 3 trays are full ur fine, id leave the sponges in there cuz it catches big debris. I have fx5 and ac110(for polishing) on my setup

Go S. Vettel #1 rb8
 
Sounds good guys, thanks. I was just curious if anyone had done it. And if not, why. Now I know.

And knowing is half the battle!

lol
 
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