Monthly tank maintenance

I would just replace the floss in it.. thats what I do to mine, all the carbon and Zeolite stays in another tray and bacteria is at the bottom, so the top floss gets changed

My routine is a 50% water change every other week. the same for all the tanks. Also, every other water change, I inspect filters and rinse half the filter media in the old tank water. That's pretty much it.

While doing the water change, I test the water for ammonia, nitrites and nitrates.

Activated carbon has to be replaced constantly, since it gets stuffed up quickly and will stop removing whatever you want to remove with carbon.

I only use activated carbon to remove meds and polish the water of my display tanks once every 3 months. My private tank on my desk and the 10 gallons in my bedroom use just a sponge.

Don't change anything. Remove some water from your tank into a bucket. Then take out all the filter media and rinse it in this old tank water. DO NOT rinse it with new tap water cuz the chlorine will kill all your bacteria. After you've rinsed all this crap out just put it back in and replace whatever tank water you took out with new dechlorinated water. If you want you can vacumm the gravel but i'd do that at the same time as removing your water.

Activated carbon is pretty much useless after a couple of days. It is only good at removing really fine particles and chemicals in your water, (also discolouration) a lot of people (including myself) do not use activated carbon because its expensive and its not really all that useful. I only use it for removing medication if i ever use any in my tank or if somehow my tank is discoloured from something such as tanins from driftwood. I recommend you don't use it because it will save you money and also if you have plants it may remove some of the elements that plants need to flourish.

First off, dont be scared. If your willing to drive arround in some deathtrap dodge, you have the courage to deal with this (GMC IS 4 ME!!) MY routine is to test the water twice weekly. I tend to do water changes between 20-40ppm of nitrate, or if the levels are not there after 2 weeks (rare) I do one anyways. I always gravel vac as much as I can, then use the old tank water to rinse the filter media and replace it. If there is algae, which isnt often, I will scrape that off first so the vac, and filter will get most of it out of the water column.

I will second (or third?whatever) that carbon is not needed unless for those specific purposes mentioned above. But it can be a bed for bacteria, so if its in there already, leaving it wont hurt.

I dont have experience with canisters, but Ive read more than one thread where some eety beety springloaded part flies off into the abbismal nowhere, so be careful with that.

So long as we're talking about monthly filter routines, I think I'll piggy-back a question I have about my betta's filter in this thread, if no one minds. >_>

The filter in his tank isn't a canister one, rather it's a submersible Elite Mini by Hagen. I went to the store and found replacement filter thingies that look like little square black sponges. The instructions were simple-- open filter, take out old spongey thing, put in new spongey thing, replace filter.

To my mind, it would seem that if I were to replace the spongey thing inside the filter with a new one, I would end up re-cycling the tank... So I'm thinking I should just rinse out the existing spongey thing and stick it back in the filter. Right? If that's all I have to do for monthly filter care, when should the spongey thing actually be changed? (I'm guessing yearly...?)

Only change the spongy thingy if it is falling appart. Your fine with a good rinse, but make sure to use old tank water, or water that has been dechlored. If you do have to change one out, put the new one in, and leave the old one in there too for a few weeks so the bacteria can start out there. If not, as you correctly assumed, you will recycle the tank.

Hey, I was right! I think I'm starting to get the hang of this fish keeping stuff! ^_^

:clap:

mandimoron said:

Hey, I was right! I think I'm starting to get the hang of this fish keeping stuff! ^_^

Click to expand...

:clap: :bday: