Do I need to clean Japanese mats if used on a trickle filter?
- Thread starter qguy
- Start date
The only thing I never "cleaned" was my old cast iron skillet.
Do the mats get filthy and dirty? Sludge, dead bacteria, sand, dirt, dust accumulate and reduce the effectiveness of the filter.
Do the mats get filthy and dirty? Sludge, dead bacteria, sand, dirt, dust accumulate and reduce the effectiveness of the filter.
The mats did get dirty when it was submerged, not sure if the same will happen when used in a trickle filter. I was thinking the dirt/dead bacteria would be washed off with the water flow....
I would say yea. I have an external overflow and played around with mat as a prefilter so water went through the weir, ran through 4” of mat then reached the water level of the overflow and my mat was pretty dirty after 2 weeks.
I have used these in tanks, and in pond filers, and had to regularly clean them (sometimes twice per week in my large cichlid tanks).
I'd just toss them on the lawn and hose them down, flipping occasionally.
In tanks where they didn't get too gummed up, I'd swish them around in a bucket of old water change water.
If you don't clean them, after being gummed up they add a ton of nitrate back in the water column as the gunk metabolizes.
I'd just toss them on the lawn and hose them down, flipping occasionally.
In tanks where they didn't get too gummed up, I'd swish them around in a bucket of old water change water.
If you don't clean them, after being gummed up they add a ton of nitrate back in the water column as the gunk metabolizes.