Filter Floss & Prefilters

[9tails]

Not all women are desperately opposed to anything fishy or dirty or creepy.

As a woman myself, I have bloodworm in the fridge, brineshrimp and grindal worm cultures on the kitchen windowsill. My husband tells me it look like a mad scientist's laboratory. There is also a daphnia farm in the garden, though they all died because the water overheated. so now I'm having fun collecting mosquito larvae. If I had anything to wash in the washing machine, I'd gladly run it through rather than handwashing or washing smalls.

Concering prefilters, I took mine out because it only took a day for the floss to clog and slow my pump down to a trickle. The charcoal is also out, I don't see the point of that, but my tanks are still crystal clear. Granted, the sponges have a fair number of snails but they were there before the floss was removed anyway.

 

[daveedka]

I certainly didn't mean to paint a bad picture especially of my wife, It's the washing machine in particular that had me worried. She just got a new Maytag neptune this year, and still treats it like a new BMW (pretty close for a washing machine) so I didn't figure she wouldn't want fishy water in it at least until the newness wore off.
Dave

 

[JSchmidt]

That's scary RTR, two of my biggest dreams are a tank room and a large personal library, I'd rather have books than a big screen TV.

I have to add this, Last weekend my wife was watching me wash out sponges in the laundry sink, and suggested I just chunk the whole lot of them into the maytag and run them through a wash cycle. I almost started laughing. But when I mentioned that they were pretty nasty she reminded me that my work close go in there every week, and nothing in my fish tanks could be as bad as grease, nitrate powder, and rock dust. So I took her up on her offer. I guess I should have given her more credit.
dave

How well does it work to rinse your sponges in the washer? That would be quite a time-saver. You haven't had any problems from residual detergent in the machine or excessive wear on the sponges? I might try it...

Jim

 

[LongTime]

I am also concerned about some type of residue from the washing machine. I don't think I could trust it and I am also assuming that you are just running a cold water rince cycle or something like that.

 

[daveedka]

I tried the rinse only and it didn't get the job done. I run a full wash and double rinse, with no added soap of course. i've yet see any side effect other than some funky shapes when I forget to turn off the high speed spin. I was pretty worried about residual soap as well, I did a lot of sniffing they still smell like fish poop and j-moss (yuck), and even hand rinsed a few to see if i got bubbles no problem at all.
Dave

 

[125gJoe]

.. .....

Concering prefilters, I took mine out because it only took a day for the floss to clog and slow my pump down to a trickle. ....

It does seem like pre-filters would clog rather quickly. Also, I prefer to keep hands out of the water as much as possible. No matter how clean your hands are, the next time they may not be so clean... :thud:

 

[daveedka]

How would one use floss as a prefilter? floss IME needs to be inside some type of containment device in order to work well, unless you were to stuff it into your intake tube (which wouldn't be enough surface area to do anything but clog) I can't see how it would work.

BTW Joe, I seldom if ever put my hands in the tank water I spend a lot of time with heavy grease, oil and fuel not to mention the nitrate residues and other agents / chemicals which get on everything near a blast site, and my hands are often stained which makes me quite nervous about putting them in the tank. I change the sponges during my weekly partials and vaccuming. the HOB's have extended tubes which can be lifted from above, and the powerheads on the UGF's are all at the top of the tank which is well above the water level when I am vaccuming. they are far easier to access than the Hob's on the back of my tank against the wall.
Dave

 

[125gJoe]

How would one use floss as a prefilter? ....
BTW Joe, I seldom if ever put my hands in the tank water.. ... ...
the HOB's have extended tubes which can be lifted from above, and the powerheads on the UGF's ....

Floss could be 'formed' and secured with 2 small rubber bands..

Does your HOB have a plastic cover? Condensation could drip down off the tube into the water column. I tinker with the bike and cars, and I could go as far as being paranoid about gas and grease residue on my hands! Not good at all....

A friend of mine didn't listen once about dirty hands from a recent oil change and wondered what caused a 55 gallon saltwater fish kill.. He had thought he cleaned his hands thoroughly before that water change on the tank.. :thud:

 

[daveedka]

I scrub up as well as I can and usually do my tank work on my days off in order to avoid contamination as much as possible. BTW Fast orange or similar are the cleanest rinsing hand cleaners on the market. I worry more about the agents and chemicals used in blasting because they are often undetectable through normal means. The bottom line is that there is no way to do maintenance without touching anything that might go in the water. so whether or not a prefilter is used would have very little bearing on how clean I can keep my hands. I fully agree that you can't be too careful. I use tools for almost everything, and keep them very clean as well. I've never in all of my years lost a fish do to contamination from my hands, but I still think about it a lot. I have poisoned myself once or twice though.
dave

 

[golfer]

Another idea

I have 4 Magnum 350's on my 240 and 2 are used for mech. and 2 are set up with bioballs...All I do for the mech part is wrap the floss around the inside
tube several times and then drop the tube into the canister. Nothing else...
The water is micron filtered using the wrapped floss and I change it every
4 weeks or so. Actually I can't believe Marineland hasn't thought about
doing this already....Their micron cartridge in IMO is crap because it clogs
very quickly and the flow drops to zero.Just my .02 cents.....

Paul