Switching to new bio media

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AguilarRLTW

AguilarRLTW

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Jun 10, 2016
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So just a rundown before i ask my question.
90 gallon american cichlid tank with an oscar, JD, texas, blood parrot, and a plec all at about 6"-7". I Got 2 aqueon 55/75 quiet flow HOB filters and a cobalt EXT canister. The canister has ceramic ring media (2 out of the 4 trays). The aqueon filters have 12 pot scrubbers per filter as bio media.
The pot scrubbers kind of suck because they get super dirty quickly and have a low surface area. Ive decided to switch to lava rock in mesh bags instead which r currently sitting in the tank with a powerhead aimed towards the bags.
Question is... how should i go about switching out the pot scrubbies with the lava rock without messing up my bio chemistry too much? (Note: i have 4 mesh bags of lava rock that will be goin into these filters because they each have 2 compartments and the canister will remain exactly as is with ceramic rings)
 
If you want to move the rocks into the filter inside the bags they are in, then take out the same volume of scrubbies as one bag takes up, and replace with one bag at a time over a week or two.

If you don't mind just tossing the lava rocks in without the bags you can just do one or two piece of rock and day and take out the same volume of scrubbies. You can always take the rocks out of the filter once they seed and put them back in bags for convenience of cleaning.

I try to do this when I'm seeding a new tank. Instead of just taking a bunch of media from one tank and moving it to the new tank I take a bit from a few different aquariums and combine them in the new one providing all the donor tanks are healthy. Taking out 5-10% of the media from an established tank has yet to cause me a mini cycle and I've done it three times in the past few months. Best of luck!
 
MonsterFishCreeper said:
If you want to move the rocks into the filter inside the bags they are in, then take out the same volume of scrubbies as one bag takes up, and replace with one bag at a time over a week or two.

If you don't mind just tossing the lava rocks in without the bags you can just do one or two piece of rock and day and take out the same volume of scrubbies. You can always take the rocks out of the filter once they seed and put them back in bags for convenience of cleaning.

I try to do this when I'm seeding a new tank. Instead of just taking a bunch of media from one tank and moving it to the new tank I take a bit from a few different aquariums and combine them in the new one providing all the donor tanks are healthy. Taking out 5-10% of the media from an established tank has yet to cause me a mini cycle and I've done it three times in the past few months. Best of luck!
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Yea thats wat i was thinking, a compartment per week.
 
The lava rock, that's just like plain old rocks? Why don't you get some pond matrix this time? It''s not that expensive, it's kinda made for this, tried and true.
 
ragin_cajun said:
The lava rock, that's just like plain old rocks? Why don't you get some pond matrix this time? It''s not that expensive, it's kinda made for this, tried and true.
Click to expand...
Its not plain old rock. Its highly pourus rock. Its one of the best bio media in my opinion and also the reason i want to use lava rock is because each individual rock is about an inch so ill get good flow to each piece since its an HOB filter
 
ahhh...i've heard about it here, but I've never used it. is it that like that red lava rock they sell at fish stores, think they use it in salt water tanks for live rock?
 
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