Filter change or squeeze clean?

HI All,

I'm running a Aquaclear 70 in my 26 gal tank. My tank has been fully cycled for well over a year. I do a 25% water change / gravel vac every week, sometimes this gets stretched to every two weeks.

During my regular maintenance, I swap out the charcoal for a new bag but I've never changed out the sponge filter or even so much as shaken it clean in a bucket of vacummed out tank water.

My AC filter has the sponge on bottom, charcoal bag in the middle with the small bio cylinders on top.

My question regarding my sponge like filter:

Can I squeeze it clean and put it back without removing too much beneficial bacteria? Can I replace it with a brand new sponge all together w/o risk of going into a new cycle?

Thank you,

Gunzer

 

Yes, I squeeze mine every week when doing a water change. The majority of bacteria should be living in the ceramic media.

 

Good morning,

Keep your filter media until it is falling apart. If you remove it, you may throw the tank into a minI cycle with increased ammonia levels which can be harmful for your fish.

I suggest just a swoosh and gentle squeeze in siphoned tank water and put it back into the filter.

If the sponge is falling apart, add a new sponge into the tank itself for 1 month. This will seed the new sponge with beneficial bacteria needed to help maintain the cycle. Then you can remove the old sponge.

Ken

 

IMO, it is never good to replace the filter media in a system and I never do it unless it is totally wasted and falling apart. I just slosh it around in my water change bucket to rinse the big stuff off and then put it back. Now what I have done to help keep the filter media itself clean is I have place a sponge pre-filter on the water pick up tubes and I do get quite aggressive when cleaning it. I don’t use the sponge filter as part of the bio system as much as I do just to stop the food from entering the filter.

 

aquaclears are designed to let you know when the sponge needs to be cleaned - the media basket pops the lid off.

I always clean my sponges with running tap water. It will kill SOME of the bacteria, but not ALL of it. The surviving bacteria quickly recolonizes the sponge.

 

I just put them in a bucket of water from tank and just swish it around

 

I take out all my filter materiel and put it in a bucket with tank water and swoosh it all around then pour off the dirty water and do it again. If I think a piece of filter materiel is falling to pieces I add new filter materiel underneath it for two weeks then I throw out the piece that is falling apart. I will say that the water in the bucket with my filter materiel is really black and icky so I rinse it twice.

 

I have aquaclears too. The bacteria are supposed to be living in the stone bag, but I'm sure there's some living in the sponge too. I squeeze it every water change or two in my planted tank because it gets funky quick. Never caused any problems.

 

Thanks for weighing in everyone. I will swoosh the sponge in my next bucket of vacummed tank water to remove the heavy stuff then put it back in.

Gunzer

 

any time that you mess with the filter, it's a good idea to fast the fish for a day (or two if you really disrupted things). Not feeding the fish will minimize how much waste is produced, allowing the bacteria colony to recover.