Wet/Dry Cleaning

Depends--do you have mechanical filtration in front of the wet-dry? If so cleaning this mechanical filter off will be needed but the bio-media should be okay.

When I ran a wet-dry, I would run a bunch of water through it, fairly rapidly. This forced the solids down into the sump area, where snails/stars, etc could get to them, I never removed the media and rinsed it, just gave it a high flow. However, rinsing them in clean saltwater won't kill the bacteria--and the bacteria that consume nitrates will not live in the wet-dry anyway, too much oxygen.
 
The water comes in, runs through one of those blue spongy filters, goes through a bunch of live rock vs. bio balls, then down into the bottom where the water sits. I also have a phosphate sponge and my carbon underneath as well as a protein skimmer recycling that water. Then it goes back up to the tank.

I rinse the blue filter each week with regular tap water since it gets brown. I tried running the filter without the blue sponge and noticed a LOT of detritus making its way down underneath where I had to now clean my outakes more often from debris.

So a few more questions then related to this topic. What creatures can I put down there with no light to help with this natural filter that won't be sucked back into the tank? Snails, brittles? They wouldn't have any cover unless I put some LR all the way at the bottom.

Also I really cannot rinse my bio media since it is full of little piece of LR. I think that would be too complex to attempt to yank that out and rinse it all. The tank is almost 5 years old now. Thoughts on this?

Thanks!

Mike
 
I have a collection of limpets, strombus snails, and small stars dwelling in my sump. They may find themselves in the return pump occasionally, but I haven't noticed. A serpent star will probably have a good time in there as well.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
AquariaCentral.com
Top Bottom