55 Gallon Tank My Opinion on small canister pre filter and large main canister filter

[Utar]

Several months ago I watched a youtube video where the pond guru guy talked about setting up a small pre canister filter to clean the water before it entered the large main canister filter. In this he stated that a person would only have to clean the small pre canister. I thought that would be great to have to only clean the small one because the large one is very heavy.

Here is a picture of my setup.





I have been doing this for several months now I can say it does not work as advertised. Every water change I cleaned out the smaller canister, but left the larger one alone. After three months the large canister started spitting out a lot of nasty looking water.

I took the large one apart to clean and found out I really should have been cleaning the big canister much more often, then what I led myself to believe. Inside it was really nasty.

So in my opinion and what I experienced the small pre canister filtration method is not what it is hyped up to be.

On a side note, my dirted fully planted aquarium compared to say a cichlid only tank with rocks and substrate only, probably produces much more detritus and waste.

What do you all think and have you done this?

 

[fldspringer]

I use the Ehiem pre-filter on the intake, and a setup like yours (seems the booster filter is a bit larger?) on the first filter on a 135g tank. FYI the second filter is a Ehiem 2217 behind the same prefiler on the intake and that filter is nothing but foam.

In my sun-sun, I have nothing but various bio media in all four trays (no foam) and its likely pushing a year without touching it. The filter on the intake gets cleaned up during water changes (weekly + or -) and the booster canister needs attention about every couple months when flow starts to slow. Theory is if water makes it through the three foam steps, any particles it should pass through the bio media and return to the tank.

I have no idea what I'll find when I open the big canister, but likely won't until I have to. When I first started the setup I opened it up after 6 months and the media was about the same as when I put it in.

Lots of advise from internet pros isn't worth the time spent watching the video. His idea of putting ceramic bio rings to settle the "muck" is nothing but a noise source as one of those rings gets moved around by the inflow. The rest made sense to me, and so far, so good.

FYI the 135 g tank is fairly heavily stocked low tech planted tank.

Greg

 

[richiep]

I use the same booster on all my fluval filters, in the fluval ive nothing but biomedia, no sponges or floss, in the booster of which there's two sizes I have sponge and one layer of floss as the last stage, I find I clean the booster once a month and change the floss, the biomedia in the fluval although I check every 6months find it needs nothing doing, as for the bio rings
I spoke to Richard on this as he put them at the bottom of the fx5/6 to try and gather large particles and also bio rings in the bottom of the booster, he said he tried them in these filters but found for the amount of muck collected was not worth bothering with,

I use the Ehiem pre-filter on the intake, and a setup like yours (seems the booster filter is a bit larger?) on the first filter on a 135g tank. FYI the second filter is a Ehiem 2217 behind the same prefiler on the intake and that filter is nothing but foam.

In my sun-sun, I have nothing but various bio media in all four trays (no foam) and its likely pushing a year without touching it. The filter on the intake gets cleaned up during water changes (weekly + or -) and the booster canister needs attention about every couple months when flow starts to slow. Theory is if water makes it through the three foam steps, any particles it should pass through the bio media and return to the tank.

I have no idea what I'll find when I open the big canister, but likely won't until I have to. When I first started the setup I opened it up after 6 months and the media was about the same as when I put it in.

Lots of advise from internet pros isn't worth the time spent watching the video. His idea of putting ceramic bio rings to settle the "muck" is nothing but a noise source as one of those rings gets moved around by the inflow. The rest made sense to me, and so far, so good.

FYI the 135 g tank is fairly heavily stocked low tech planted tank.

Greg