Can you relieve my ignorance on this?

nickmcmechan

nickmcmechan

Proudly Scottish
Feb 25, 2007
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Edinburgh, Scotland
Couple of things I've never used but would probably like to, and would like to know more about?
  1. External Canister Filter. I've always thought they were the best, but I currently use an internal combined with a UGF. However, never got round to buying one. Whats all this about cleaning them regularly. How often is that and why? Doesn't that kill off friendly bacteria?
  2. Reverse Osmosis. What is that, somehow is does something reallly good to your water, but what. I recently returned to the hobby after 20 years, cant remember anything about them? What are they and what do they do? What benefit do they bring?
Thanks, forgive the ignorance, just something I've not looked at in any detail yet.
 
I'm no expert on either, but here's my take:

1. Cleaning is about once a month to once every half year (depending on the model). As with power filters, you won't throw the material out of the filter. You just, more or less, gently shake and squeeze the foam inserts, ceramic rings or whatever you have in used tank water. That doesn't kill any bacteria.

2. Reverse Osmosis will remove all dissolved salts from your water. You will need about 10 times as much water than you produce for the process, because all those salts have to go somewhere ;). You typically use RO water if you have very hard water or water with undesirable salts like high nitrates and want to keep discus or breed rams or tetras. For just keeping most fish, you don't need RO water.

One other point: You may have to mix the RO water with some tapwater for your fish, because they won't like to live in water that has the quality of distilled one ;).
 
Thanks Ulan,

Really interesting stuff surrounding the RO and breeding Discus / Tetras. I've never kept Discus, but sounds like successful Discus keeping is a good training ground before going into Marine!

I dont know if I should have posted this in the Newbie section?

I gues I'm a half-Newbie after returning to the Hobby after so long. When I was into it as a Teenager I could tell more about Fishkeeping than most things, until I discovered Girls and my attentions wavered somewhat!

However, I've forgotten as much as I remember after that time, sometimes I feel like an expert and have vivid recollections of how I reared and bred Angles, and other times feel like a complete Newbie, like what is RO???

So, thanks for replying.

Still sounds like an external cannister is the best option, and RO for Freshwater when I win the Lottery!
 
I'm the old school guy. I clean my canisters every 7-10 days. Mainly since I use carbon in most of them, which gets depleted. I rinse the floss prefilter sleeves in warm tap water (from a well without chlorine). I also have RUGF on most all tanks, so I don't have any issues with a loss of bacteria.

Canisters already have insufficeint flow after you add in all the baskets and media, there isn't any reason to let it run for weeks and months with a degrading flow rate.
 
rbishop said:
I'm the old school guy. I clean my canisters every 7-10 days. Mainly since I use carbon in most of them, which gets depleted. I rinse the floss prefilter sleeves in warm tap water (from a well without chlorine). I also have RUGF on most all tanks, so I don't have any issues with a loss of bacteria.

Canisters already have insufficeint flow after you add in all the baskets and media, there isn't any reason to let it run for weeks and months with a degrading flow rate.
Click to expand...
So, I suppose it begs the question then, if they're that much work compared to other filter types, what's the pay off?

I mean, I've been told they're the best, but, why?
 
Flow would be the best guess. Most folks on here don't run carbon and since most don't have means to visiblely gauge decreased water flow, they clean every month - 6 months.

On a HOB, you can visible see the water bypass when the prefilter gets clogged.

I rate them great because of their higher flow as compared to most HOBs.

They have the ability to present the water to a larger square surface area of filtration to take out solid particles. You can also, on most models, add specific media for your tank, though in all reality, most do not.

You will hear hundreds spout all the increased surface area for bacteria, which is basically indifferent, since you will only have the bacteria colony size, equal to your bio load, regardless of the surface area you provide.

For those that don't clean them more frequently, I equate it to their same issue as an UGF trapping uneaten food with poor maintenance conditions.

I have 27 tanks, and over 45 Mag 350s at last count. Two HOBs. 23 RUGF. 2 UGF. And a crap load of sponges.
 
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