# Eheim Ecco Canister  - better media ?



## george29 (29 Sep 2018)

Hi,

We are just setting up a new  planted tank with an Eheim Ecco 2034 canister filter which comes with  a course foam pre filter and two trays, one full of Eheims own Mech pro , little spiral plastic tubes and the other with Substrat  pro, small beads of sintered glass followed by a thin pad  floss type  filter, with optional thin carbon pad filter.

Know its six of one and half a dozen of the other, but any suggestions if these can be improved or just about as good as anything ?


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## Edvet (29 Sep 2018)

In a wel planted tank the plants and substrate willl contail a lot of helpfull bacteria making the filter media less important. Keeping a healthy flow through the filter ( mostly use little media) is the best, to much media will produce dead spots. In unplanten heavily stocked tanks the filter and media become more important.


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## Zeus. (29 Sep 2018)

Second what Edvert says 

Course and medium filter and a bit of ceramic is all I have in my FX6 for my 500L high tech tank ie. Its not rammed with media to keep the output good


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## dw1305 (29 Sep 2018)

Hi all,





Zeus. said:


> Second what Edvet


Same for me. 





george29 said:


> Eheim Ecco 2034 canister filter which comes with a course foam pre filter and two trays, one full of Eheims own Mech pro , little spiral plastic tubes and the other with Substrat pro, small beads of sintered glass


Keep the coarse foam pre-filter (assuming it is the ugly, <"but effective one">, on the intake?) and the <"coco-pops">, chuck out everything else, and don't replace them with anything.

I'm pretty lazy, and I keep very heavily planted tanks, so I can hide the pre-filter in the tank, and just clean it up every couple of weeks. This means that I only need to open the filter very occasionally. I always have an intake pre-filter, often a <"fairly substantial"> PPI10 or PPI20 foam block.

cheers Darrel


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## george29 (29 Sep 2018)

Hi,

Thanks all,  glad I put the question as plenty of interesting advice there , partic not overfilling the trays and having a pre filter on the intake, will help save having to open the canister so  often.


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## dw1305 (30 Sep 2018)

Hi all,





george29 said:


> partic not overfilling the trays and having a pre filter on the intake, will help save having to open the canister so often


I think part of the problem is the term "filter", I'd like to separate the the processes of mechanical and biological filtration. In some ways nitrification is a better term than "biological filtration", because it makes it more apparent that you just want dissolved oxygen and ammonia. 

NH3 + CO2 + 1.5 *O2* → NO2- + CO2 + 0.5 *O2* → NO3-

When I originally wrote <"aeration and ....> it  hadn't actually occurred to me that people would run a canister filter without a pre-filter, and some of the main criticisms were that having a pre-filter stopped the canister acting as a syphon, and that having too much oxygen in the filter was a bad thing, as it interfered with anaerobic denitrifiction. 

cheers Darrel


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## george29 (30 Sep 2018)

Thanks Darrel,  seems I have plenty I need to read up on !


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## Dadofthree (7 Oct 2018)

Zeus. said:


> Second what Edvert says
> 
> Course and medium filter and a bit of ceramic is all I have in my FX6 for my 500L high tech tank ie. Its not rammed with media to keep the output good


I am so sorry to jump in on this thread but zeus do you run just the fx6 on your tank


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