Layering media
- Thread starter Machine 79
- Start date
I personally don't use carbon but I actually have a mesh bag with gravel in it holding down the sponge and bag of bio media. I actually squeeze out my sponge twice a week in aquarium water removed from wc's.
Interesting. Do you have live plants in your tank? I have heard of some fishkeepers not using carbon. I've never tried running with out it before. I'll have to read into that. It definitely would be a money saver for sure.
I have plants in my smaller aquariums. The reason I don't use carbon is that it actually will mask a issue with aquarium water and you wouldn't know it until fish start acting abnormal or testing parameters. Most of my aquariums smell mildly earthy except for the aquariums with driftwood and leaf litter. It's everyone's personal choice to use Activated Carbon if they choose to do so.
If proper wc's and filter maintenance is performed your aquarium should never smell for example fishy and yes some foods will make the aquarium smell bad for a few minutes lol.
Curious as to what driftwood of leave litter make an aquarium smell like. My 36 gallon has a lot of driftwood and to me it smells earthy. Agree with everything else tho, tanks shouldn't ever smell "off," sour, foul, rotting, or anything too strong.
Agree, I also never use carbon, a tank should always have a pleasant "earthy" odor, like tropical rain forest.
Offensive odors mean something is amiss and needs to be sorted out. That could mean anything from a corpse, to hydrogen sulfide buildup in the substrate (smells like rotten eggs) , to not enough water changes, and filter maintenance.
I have lots of plants, and lots of water logged wood pieces in my 180, some logs are over 3ft long.
In filters I usually place some sort of mechanical media first in line, before the biomedia, because I don't want gunk to build up on the it, that buildup can choke out the beneficial bacteria, which are aerobic, and gunk buildup hinders the aerobic process.
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Yes it has a earthy but a bit stronger than my other aquarium's without driftwood and leaf litter.
I totally understand what you guys meN about smells. Food that get trapped in crevices of the tank lids etc does smell like hot garbage. I can also smell when something's "off" in the tank as well. As in regards to media maintenance I do a wc midweek and filter cleaning on weekends. 11 filters total including sponge filters which I see as a water polisher. I was recently at a breeder who uses strictly sponge filters in his tanks and cleans them with tap water everyday or every other day. I ask him why not use the tank water? He response was because he is on well water. I'm skeptical on this theory. Also says it results in less water changes. I keep my cleaning strictly with tank water even though I'm on well water myself and my tap water tests pretty good. What do you guys think about this ? Please weigh in!
With personal well water there is no need to worry about chlorine, so using tap water to rinse media is a non-issue.
Where I live, I don't worry about chlorine either, we have desalinated sea water, that goes straight to my cistern, so by the time I use it for the tank or filter cleaning all chlorine has long since gassed off.
I also drip straight tap water straight to the tank, changing about 30% of tanks volume per day, and don't use any dechlorination product like Prime, or Sodium Thiosulfate. When I lived in the states, I used sodium thiosulfate on my every other day 30-40% water changes.
Where I live, I don't worry about chlorine either, we have desalinated sea water, that goes straight to my cistern, so by the time I use it for the tank or filter cleaning all chlorine has long since gassed off.
I also drip straight tap water straight to the tank, changing about 30% of tanks volume per day, and don't use any dechlorination product like Prime, or Sodium Thiosulfate. When I lived in the states, I used sodium thiosulfate on my every other day 30-40% water changes.