how often do you clean your filter?

Pallen81

Pallen81

TheSunCoralTamer
Jun 20, 2006
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Lawrenceville, NJ
www.mygodmusic.com
Last night, I broke down my HOB Emperor 400 filter. I think the last time I broke it down and cleaned it (in a bucket of tank water of course)was about 3-4 months ago. Man, it needed it. Gunk and nasty junk really come out of the suction tube and everywhere else! Once i hooked it back up... it was working so effeciently its like having brand new filter!

How often do you break down your filter and give it a good rinse out?
 
About 4 - 6 weeks........:dance2:
 
Depends on flow. I typically do it in stages....

I'll pull the upflow pipe and impeller and clean them, that helps a lot. I only need to do that every 4-5 months. The media lasts about 4 weeks and gets changed. The area near the biowheel gets gunked up and impacts flow as well, so i scrub that every few months including the bio wheel plastic pins and mating bearings/mounts.

Otherwise, I don't touch the main body of the filter except for every several months, and that's typically just to harvest snails.

I never completely break it down and clean the whole thing, and I do have a second filter on the tank, so I worry less about changing media out.
 
Palen,

You don't need to wash your emporer in tank water. The only part of it that needs that are the biowheels. The rest of it you can wash in the sink/tub/whatever. You don't really want biology living anywhere else.

That being said, I do it every couple of months. Once the spray tube starts showing signs of being clogged, it's time to clean.

Luckily, you can get 4 packs of the drop in filters for about ~$8 online (big als is great), so I usually rinse them out once or twice and then throw them away the next time.

It sure helps though...noise and flow.

And heck, I still use one of my emporers on the back of my sw tank.
 
I clean my Aquaclear 20 once a month, mostly for the benefit of the sponge which becomes completely black in that time.
 
tubes and suctions, once a month.. whole filter, every other month, and media, whenever it gets clogged (never had to, yet!)
 
Subliminal said:
You don't need to wash your emporer in tank water. The only part of it that needs that are the biowheels. The rest of it you can wash in the sink/tub/whatever.
Click to expand...

I just clean it out in tank water (siphoned from the tank) because I figure it may help keep any bacterias alive. Plus, over here in Lawrenceville if I run my water long enough it stinks of chlorine. I don't know if it does that in Princeton.... So I'd rather get my hands all dirty and use tank water to be sure!

I clean my media every week to get any sludge build up out of the mesh.
 
I've got a pre-filter on my eheim cannister that gets brown after a couple weeks. I clean that whenever I see it brown. Since I've only had the my set up for a few months, I've yet to clean the filter and hoses yet. I figure though that the pre-filter prevents a lot of built up so keeping that clean is important to the longevity of the filter and media.
 
Pallen81 said:
I just clean it out in tank water (siphoned from the tank) because I figure it may help keep any bacterias alive. Plus, over here in Lawrenceville if I run my water long enough it stinks of chlorine. I don't know if it does that in Princeton.... So I'd rather get my hands all dirty and use tank water to be sure!

I clean my media every week to get any sludge build up out of the mesh.
Click to expand...

I have well water. I don't even use ro/di for my tanks...fw or sw...just straight out the tap...and the fishies they love it.

That being said, like I was saying, the emporer is only designed to have the biology living in the biowheel. The rest of it doesn't really need anything to grow on it.

Anyway, doesn't matter...do whatcha want, just thought i'd point it out since I've been using the emporers for about 6 or 7 years now. I like them...although they do tend to get noisy on occassion.
 
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