Rinsing off pre-filter sponge

[99RedSi]

What does it hurt if you rinse a pre-filter sponge for a cannister filter (Eheim) in normal tap water vs. syphoned out aquarium water? Isn't the point to get the garbage off the pre-filter sponge and ring it out until it looks good as new for the upcoming week??

Thanks.

[wetmanNY]

By the time your system has been up and running for a while, your biofilter everywhere all through it is pretty robust. I've just finished rinsing out a bunch of filters right under the tap myself.

But at the beginning you have to encourage all the biofilter microbes you can scrape together...

[rjl420]

that's fine, it's what I do as well. the only thing you don't want to clean with tap water is your bio-filtration.

[Richer]

I'm with wetmanNY. In the beginning you might want to just rinse your prefilter through dechlorinated water. But once your filter has been running for awhile and you got yourself a stable bacterial population in your filter, go ahead and blast that prefilter with tap water. Its what I do.

HTH
-Richer