filter maintenance

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MJMiller

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Mar 22, 2003
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Hello...

I'm not really up on all the filter lingo, so bear with me... I have a Juwel aquarium/filter (some sort of tower filter-style thing). It basically goes top-to-bottom in the back corner of the tank. It has 1 fine filter pad, 2 coarse filter pads, one charcoal pad, and a top screen thing...

I change the screen every time I change the water and the charcoal element every once in a while. The coarse pads I rinse out when I change the charcoal pad, and I hardly ever touch the fine pad (I didn't even know it was in the filter for months...)

Anyway, I recently planted the tank, so there has been a lot more junk going through the filter (plant bits and stuff). I do water changes every other week, but last time I ran out of filter pads and so had the store, so I skipped it until the next change (today). The filter was pretty nasty. I decided to rinse out everything, and stirred up a lot of junk in the process. For some stupid reason when I added the water, I dumped it in through the filter (I didn't want to knock around the plants) and a bunch of thick brown sludge squirted out the bottom intake... The tank got so brown I couldn't find the fish... but, no harm done it seems.

So after all that... Do I need to be paying more attention to the filter? Should I be pulling it all apart and vacuuming it out every time I do water changes? How are you all taking care of this kind of filter?

Thanks.
 

MJMiller

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Mar 22, 2003
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Yep, that's the one... It is actually attached to the side of the tank, so I don't plan on changing to a different style.

It really isn't costing too much, I suppose I could be practical and use something else instead of buying the pre-filter pads. I've only spent about $15-20 on it over almost 1 yr.

Anyway, I don't think I'm too far off from what that page is recommending for cleaning. I was just surprised by how much crap (I assume that's what it was...) had collected in the bottom of it.

Now that I know it's in there, maybe I'll suck it out from time-to-time.
 

OrionGirl

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Aug 14, 2001
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For most tanks, just manually cleaning the pads in clean water will suffice. Rinse until you are not getting any more guck out, and clean all the pads with each water change. This prevents the sludge from building up, which means cleaner water. Afterall, if the sludge is in the filter, it's still affecting the water quality and trapped wastes are still breaking down in the tank. The manufacturer's seldom tell you to clean the filter as often as it needs to be cleaned--past setting up the filter according to directions, I don't follow the manufacturer's advice.
 
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