Clean em or no?

[Hot Slime]

Hey,
I have noticed that the ceramic rings in my canister filter(mag350) is starting to get dirty , as in there starting to get covered with brown algea. Well heres how I use the filter with the rings to give you guys a better idea. I run the micron cartriges so I the rings fill up the remaining space of the canister. There not bagged but i do have a prefilter on the intake tube of the filter to help trap the debris. Are the brown algea cloggin the rings? Should I wipe it down or keep it clean? Or is the algea not doing anything to the rings? Thankyou for the help.

 

[PredatorTank215]

Do you algae in the water? If not then your better off leaving them. Its better to have algae grow outside of the tank than in.

If you were to clean them do it in aquarium water. Tap water contains chlorine and will kill your bio.

 

[Hot Slime]

Yes i know that cleaning with tap water will kill the BB. I plan to just wipe em down with a sponge in the tank water. The tank is an outdoor tank, so it gets algea from the sunlight. I just wanted to know if the algea will clog the rings and will wipping them down with the sponge in tankwater would kill the BB thats already colonizing the rings.

 

[PredatorTank215]

Not if its in tankwater

 

[jcardona1]

i clean out my rings in my FX5 all the time as they get clogged with gunk. i take a 5g bucket and empty the water in the canister into the bucket. i then dump all the rings in there and rinse them out little by little.

if i dont do this regularly the flow of my filter is greatly reduced

 

[FSM]

Just swirl them around in tank water.

 

[Hot Slime]

Ahh, I see I see. Thankyou all for the help.

 

[tcarswell]

I just did this with my substrate pro from my 2215. How much BB do you think I lost? I swirled it all in a 5 gallon bucket of tank water.

 

[cchhcc]

I just did this with my substrate pro from my 2215. How much BB do you think I lost? I swirled it all in a 5 gallon bucket of tank water.

Very little at all. The only BB you lost was that which physically sloughed off the subpro, and that was likely not much at all.

 

[tcarswell]

Very little at all. The only BB you lost was that which physically sloughed off the subpro, and that was likely not much at all.

Thanks for the reply thats good news!