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.
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.