Is this rinsing my filters too much?

[FahakaPapa]

I take it you run cannisters of some sort on your systems? One of the downsides of cannisters, compared to sumps (yes, I run sumps) is that you only have 'x' amount of space for mech, and 'x' amount of space for bio. You are stuck with those limited spaces.

All too often, due to this limited space, I think most people find that their bio section alone isn't always up to scratch on producing enough BB for their bio load. And so they begin to rely on BB within the mech side too.

This can be a problem when maintanance time comes. Usually you'd leave the bio media alone but when washing/rinsing the mech side how vigorously, and for how long do you rinse it when you're in danger of getting rid of a heap of BB too?

Wash too much and you might get a spike in ammonia for a while when you put it all back together. Wash too little and you've still got a load of crud in your filters.

Also, although it is the correct and recognised thing to do, you must always wash your mech filters in a bucket of tank water. But once you start squeezing those sponges....ugghhh, the water goes muddy and then the whole point of cleaning/rinsing has completely gone!

My mech side gets blasted under the tap. Hot, chlorine rich tap water, and whether any BB get annihilated along the way, it doesn't matter, because my large bio sections are more than capable of coping. Never do I experience parameter spikes after filter cleaning.

If I ran cannisters I think I'd run sponge filters in conjunction too. Hopefully there'd be enough BB in the sponge filter to cope with any BB losses in my main filter during cleaning. That way you too may also get away with blitzing your mech side under "deadly" hot tap water.

I do the same exact thing. Rinse my mechanical filtration in hot tap water, but I also run a sump that is half the size of my tank with more than enough bio media to cope with it. I don't ever get spikes either.

 

[neutrino]

What do you know, a thread with differing opinions that stayed friendly.

I've had a couple of the Aqueon Quietflow 75s before, not the durability of Aquaclear or Seachem ime, but nice, fast, little filters when you ditch the cartridges and put the available space to better use. Been a long time since I've used carbon-- except when I've got a newish piece of collected bog wood releasing heavy tannins in a tank and I want to attenuate that some.

 

[jjohnwm]

...What do you know, a thread with differing opinions that stayed friendly...

It's only been 20-ish posts...give it time...

Now, what's this nonsense about using carbon for tannins??? Them's fightin' words...

Kidding aside, even back when I did occasionally use carbon I never wasted valuable space in my main filter for this purpose. I just used one of those old-fashioned (I know, hard to believe...) air-powered box filters and dropped it in temporarily, filled with carbon. My main filter, whether HOB or canister (yeah, I used those back before I knew any better...) continued to run in standard mode, i.e. foam only, or sometimes even foam on top of a canister full of gravel.

 

[neutrino]

Now, what's this nonsense about using carbon for tannins??? Them's fightin' words...

Collecting my own wood, I sometimes get a piece that's a prodigious tannin producer for the first two or three months. Left alone, objects in the tank start being obscured within a couple of days of a water change. So enough carbon to keep them down to a reasonable level between water changes, not to remove them all. Saves me soaking such pieces for weeks and constantly changing water in a tub before getting it into a tank. (after heating to kill bugs, microbes, etc)

 

[jjohnwm]

Collecting my own wood, I sometimes get a piece that's a prodigious tannin producer for the first two or three months. Left alone, objects in the tank start being obscured within a couple of days of a water change. So enough carbon to keep them down to a reasonable level between water changes, not to remove them all. Saves me soaking such pieces for weeks and constantly changing water in a tub before getting it into a tank. (after heating to kill bugs, microbes, etc)

I get that.

Not for me, because in addition to being cheap, I am also patient...but sometimes it's nice to get some quick gratification, and carbon will help out in that case.

 

[neutrino]

I get that.

Not for me, because in addition to being cheap, I am also patient...but sometimes it's nice to get some quick gratification, and carbon will help out in that case.

Makes a difference to me the color and quality of what the wood's releasing. It's one thing for the water to turn a nice color and be dark and clear. That I like. But occasionally I get a piece that looks good but produces a dingy, murky effect. That's when I intervene.

One thing I've observed (which I believed anyway), because it's obvious when carbon slows down or stops doing much when you use it this way-- carbon works longer than most people think.