Nasty Tubes

[chuckj]

I've had my new tank running for about 1.5 months now and everything seems to be going really well so far.

One thing I've noticed is the lines running to and from my canister filter have become quite nasty, with algae/slime or something. I guess this is probably to be expected, but is this something that needs to be cleaned regularly? If so, how? I'm running a Filstar XP2 and the thought of breaking these tubes back off the shutoff valve with the cheesy plastic clamps they provided doesn't sound like a fun project!

[OrionGirl]

I clean the tubes on my filters about once every 6 months, more often if they are looking ichy. While this build up isn't harmful, it will start to break off in little bitsy pieces in the water column, and if thick enough, can restrict water movement. You can buy metal hose clamps--$.25 at home depot--and as long as they stay dry, they'll work just fine.

[slipknottin]

I always wrap clear tubes in something that blocks light, duct tape or masking tape for instance.

It will greatly impede the growth of algae.

[anonapersona]

This slime is bacteria, not algae, unless perhaps the hose is clear and gets a lot of light.

First, you will have to break the whole thing down to do a major cleaning every so often, maybe every 6 months or so. But, you may be able to blow a lot of that crud out of the line during a normal water change.

What I do is, while doing a normal water change, I'll unhook the canister and manually open both shut-off valves and shoot water from the tank inlet and outlet lines into a large bucket. Depending on where the outlet is in the tank, it may run dry quickly if it is high in the tank near the surface.

The outlet line is the more important to clean, IMO, since any bacteria that sluffs off the tubing will blow straight into the tank, so you want to keep that clean, perhaps blowing it clear during every water change. Otherwise you'll have particles in the water, and the tank will not really look clean.

Before I started doing this, I was so mad at having cleaned the tank, maybe even the filter, and upon start-up a cloud of crud blew out of the lines. Now that does not happen, that cloud of crud was blown into the bucket and the tubing is clean of loose bio-slime.

Note, because this is bio-slime, if this is the only filter on the tank, you may want to stagger cleaning the tubing and cleaning the filter media. The blowing out of the tubing is probably not as critical but when you do the big break-it-all-down cleaning, you may disturb the balance of bio-filtration when the bio-bacteria in the tubing is removed. OTOH, if you blow the tubing clean all the time, the bulk of the bio-bacteria will be in the filter not in the tubing.

[slipknottin]

This slime is bacteria, not algae, unless perhaps the hose is clear and gets a lot of light.
.

If he can see the slime in the hose, wouldnt the hose have to be clear? ;)

[blitzen25bm]

i dont usually clean mine cause it comes back so fast, and i just deal with the cluod of gunk whenever i restart the pumps. hose clamps work good thats what i use as security in my tank go to an autoparts place cause the ones at home depot are atleast 80 cents.

[anxsar]

I clean my hoses about every 6 months. I bought a failry flexible test tube3 brush with a slightly larger diameter than the hose I need to clean. I remove the hoses and tie a pice of stranded copper wire onto the loop on the end of the brush and feed the wire down the tubing. I then (over my stationary tub where the washing machine empties) pull the brush through the tube a couple of times and rinse it i the sink.

Tubes are nearly spotless when done and nothing goes into the tank.

Anchor