Please Help With My Filter Maintenance Plan

HI guys! I have a nice new 60 gallon setup going after a five year break from fishkeeping. The tank is newly cycled and I will begin slowly adding more stock soon. My question is about my filters. I have 2 marineland 350 gph hang on the back filters running. They each hold 2 filter cartridges and each filter also has 2 five inch biowheels. Marineland says to replace the cartridges every 2 weeks, but of course that is a sales pitch. I always thought the beneficial bacteria lived mainly on the biowheels, but I have read a lot on the forum that people think that quite a bit of the biological filter actually lives in the floss of the cartridges, and I don't want to throw that out if it has a chance to unbalance the tank. Plus, those cartridges are so overpriced. So, I'm thinking: every 2 weeks I'll gently scrub the cartridges from one filter in a bucket of old water from the tank (during a 30% water change) and put the old cartridges back in. Then I'll repeat the process with the other filter two weeks later at the next 30% water change. I'll then just replace the cartridges with new ones if they start looking rough, or every 4-6 months maybe? Am I on the right track here? Or do you really need to replace the cartridges more often? Thanks for your thoughts!

 

You are absolutely on the right track! Dont change them unless they are starting to fall apart! Never change them, the longer the better. ALWAYS "clean" them weekly though! By that I don't mean scrubbing them, they will never last long if you do that... What I do is I shake them up on every side in my "dirty" water change bucket... then put them back in & done...

Dont forget! When they are starting to fall a part you must cycle your new filter! by that I mean adding the media filter in the aquarium or in the filter itself if you have space... for a good 2 weeks minumum.... since you have a bunch of them (I forgot) you could change one of them right away... then in about a month do the other one IF needed be... that way you always have a mature media filter. Therefore the new ones will cycle & have all the beneficial bacterias before changing the older ones

 

Thank you so much! Save the old floss and re-seed the new floss. Great idea! I appreciate the response, I feel better about my plan now.

 

I was told once by someone at the LFS to cut open them and dump out the charcoal in some of them. Maybe you could do that on some of 4 cartridges you have and you could even put in more media inside of it. I was thinking of doing that in mine maybe putting matrix in it. Also, I believe those 350 can each have four slots and you an put your own media in the extra slot too. Just a thought.

 

That's what I have done, just cut open the cartridge and removed the carbon. The old cartridge is then put back into the filter. I have also since added a pre-filter to the intake tube. This adds additional housing for BB but also sucks up some of the larger particles that remain in the water. This lets fish or other critters eat the food (such as flakes) before it goes up the tube where they can't get to it. This also means less cleaning of the filter pad, and just cleaning the pre-filter sponge. All in all, I like the pre-filter addition to the intake tube.

 

I was told once by someone at the LFS to cut open them and dump out the charcoal in some of them. Maybe you could do that on some of 4 cartridges you have and you could even put in more media inside of it. I was thinking of doing that in mine maybe putting matrix in it. Also, I believe those 350 can each have four slots and you an put your own media in the extra slot too. Just a thought.

The charcoal is done in under a month anyway. Great place to stuff some more media.