i have a old japanese style 60gal canister filter. i can't find all the media that used to go inside it, and i don't live in japan anymore so i can't buy it, but the filter still works. i'm thinking about just hooking it up as a secondary filder, but i already have a ehiem pro 2 100gal filtering my 55gal. i want to put all ceramic rings in my japanese filter. but i've never used ceramic rings before. what excatly do they do? i've heard something about BB growing on them but that's about it, do they do anything else? i know alot of wet/dry filter use them. any info would be much appericated.
canister filter with ceramic rings
- Thread starter KurseD
- Start date
ceramic rings have bactira grow on em and the bacteria eats the waste of fish keeping ur amonia low
thanks, do they have to be ceramic rings though? can i just use regular cut up 1in sections of pipe?
The ceramic rings also act as a mechanical filter as it breaks up the water current entering your filter provided u place it at the bottom of your canister. This ensures that the water is not strong enough to carry up large particles of waste and hence clogging up your mechanical filter. The large particles of waste will be allowed to rot at the bottom of the cannister filter providing food for the BB in other forms of media above it.
great, but if i make my second filter ALL ceramic rings, will that be harmful to the fish? is there a certian amount of BB i should have for a 55gal tank? don't want to go overboard with BB. i'm thinking of cutting up some pvc piping cuz i got like 10ft of it out back, i'm saving up for when my pbass gets in at my LFS. thanks again for all the info sohf and dial.
Ceramic is at least semi porous, at least the rings I've seen, it provides a better substrate than non porous pvc. I have used broken shards of well washed unglazed flower pots as a media in trickle trays. Have I mentioned that I'm a cheap bastard? I got a big box of broken flower pots free from K-mart when they ran over a flat of them with a forklift.
Rough and porous surfaces are better for bb colonising... so i don't really recommend pipes. There is nothing wrong with filling the whole cannister with ceramic rings but there are other media that have more surface area than ceramic rings like biohome, ehiem substrat, bacteria house, but of course these are more expensive.
ok, sounds good. thanks for all the advise everyone. yeah, the got the substrat at my LFS. i'll see if i can get a deal. thanks again.