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Media and what i sould use

G

gouldy149

Seedling
Joined
4 Jun 2012
Messages
18
Hi i have just bouhgt my first canister filter i went for the aqua manta efx300 it comes with bio balls on the bottom them some white stones which i take are the seramic then up trough a bag of carbon and finaley some filter wool. Well first thing i dnt like the look of the carbon as it already in a bag and is already broken up. So i would like some on advice on what to put in the canister and what you all use

Cheers

Rich
 
Hi,
Oddly enough the carbon will be the most useful product in that filter for at least a month. Who cares what it looks like. It's just charcoal, and charcoal never looks pretty. Why not just plug the filter in and get on with it. there is little you can add to improve it right now. There are no special stones that will improve the filter performance right now. Later, if you need to improve the flow rate through the filter you can remove some of the ceramic or some of the balls. I would suggest that you only remove useless things such as phosphate removers, if the media package comes with silly things like that.

Cheers,
 
i always remove all the floss from my external filters and use a couple of layers of coarse foam instead don't quite get the same polish some particulates do come through unlike with floss, however also unlike floss I don't need to open the thing up once a week to put new floss in. think I clean them out every 6 months or whenever I notice a drop in flow rate.
 
The only reason i dont want to use the carbon that came with it is beacuse i it is all broken up inside the bag so i am replacing it with rowa carbon that i always used with my marine tank this stuff doesent brake down like the stuff that came with the filter Thank you very much for the comments by the way havent set my tank up yet as this is my first planted tank and i am awaiting for my tank to be deilvered

Cheers
Rich
 
Yes, that's right, plus activated carbon works exactly the same whether it's broken up or not. One could even argue that broken up carbon theoretically should work better due to increased surface area. It would only be a problem if the particle sizes were smaller than the bag's mesh size. I guess marine people think nothing of spending money at the drop of a hat, but plant people are almost always misers. Money spent for name brands carbon is better spent on a few cans of Boddington's brew... :angelic:

Cheers,
 
Ok i will leave it all in and just remove the phosphate sponge and see how it all gets on. Is there any point in putting in some pureagin of not

Cheers

Ps i know what you mean about spending lot of money on marines it a habbit im trying to get out of
 
Yeah, you know in fresh water tanks there are always massively cheaper ways of accomplishing the same goals because freshwater is so much more forgiving, like your Purigen for example. Yes, this is a good product because it removes nitrogenous waste from the water column but it also has a negative effect on flow throughput in the filter. The more things you stuff in the filter box the more drag is created and the less effective are your flow and distribution of nutrients and CO2 to the plants. In a CO2 injected tank, flow rate is King. In non-CO2 enriched tanks flow rate is much less of a priority however.

You can accomplish exactly the same thing of waste removal by simply changing large amounts of your water and by doing so more often. If you remove the organic waste in the tank, such as vacuuming the gravel, removing fallen leaves, avoiding overfeeding and so forth then this keeps the tank clean and helps the water to be more clear.

Cheers,
 
Cheers thank you very much for the advice i thought about using one of my vortech power head amd turning the flow down just to give me that extra bit of flow would you advise using it or is it abit over kill

Cheers
Rich
 
I'm a graduate of the school of thought that says: there is no such thing as over-the-top flow rate. If you like to spend money, it would be better if you got another special effex300 or whatever model that is. Our rule of thumb is that for a CO2 injected tank you should have a total flow rating of 10X the volume of the tank per hour. The second best solution is to add your vortex powerhead. So if you have a 100L tank then you should have 1000LPH total flow rating for a CO2 enriched tank. Remember, this rule of thumb does not apply necessarily to a non-CO2 enriched tank. You also need to distribute the flow properly to put the energy to good use, so that the placement of the outlets are as critical as the amount of flow energy being used.

Cheers,
 
Hi all,
i always remove all the floss from my external filters and use a couple of layers of coarse foam instead......The more things you stuff in the filter box the more drag is created and the less effective are your flow and distribution of nutrients.......
Click to expand...
Same here, in fact I usually put the sponge on as a pre-filter (for ease of cleaning), and just have sintered glass or ceramic rings in the filter, and the filter body only 1/2 to 2/3 full of rings. You want a quick through-put of oxygenated water through the filter, this way biological filtration is enhanced (all the filter media is aerobic) and this helps even if you don't use CO2 etc.

cheers Darrel
 
I use the plant's for biological filtration and only thing in my canister filter (ehiem 2217) is five of the blue coarse pads with maybe a couple cups of eheim substrat pro in the bottom.
My eheim in my view,is a bit small for the 80 gallon tank and by removing everything but the five pads mentioned,,I get a bit more flow. :D
 
In terms of filter floss, is this seen to be desirable or not? Naturally polishes but at the expense of flow no doubt.

Also, I currently have the substrat pro in one layer and ceramic rings in another on an eheim classic, with powerhead.
Do you think I would be best removing the ceramic rings and just going with the one layer of substrat pro and a couple of course sponges?
 
Hi all,
Do you think I would be best removing the ceramic rings and just going with the one layer of substrat pro and a couple of course sponges?
Click to expand...
I don't think it matters, as long as the media doesn't slow the flow too much.
I've got "Eheim coco pops" in a 2011 classic and ceramic/sintered glass rings in the other filters, and the only advantage of the coco-pops is that they very rarely need cleaning. If I'm a bit short of media I've been using really cheap plastic "floating cell media" (with a coarse sponge on top to stop it getting in the impeller), and that also seems to work well.

Personally I'd always go for the sponge as a pre-filter on the intake, for ease of cleaning, but I have very weedy tanks so I can easily hide the sponge.

cheers Darrel
 
I just run whatever i have knocking around or cheapest, no carbon but find a course sponge and floss a must for clear water. Also a fan of purigen if you really want sparkling water. Filter maintenance is far more important than what is in the filter.


ceg4048 said:
Money spent for name brands carbon is better spent on a few cans of Boddington's brew...
Cheers,
Click to expand...

your knowledge doesnt stretch to beer quality then clive :angelic:
 
I agree about filter maintenance.

Having purchased an external to reduce the frequency of cleaning, what kind of timescale are you guys cleaning your filters? I often see people talking about months, where I would have thought maybe a month maximum. What do you think?

Cheers
 
Personally...floss changed weekly, pre filter sponge washed weekly, course sponges rinsed every few weeks, ceramics 2-6 months.
It really depends on the filter, if no pre filter it can be worth rinsing ceramics monthly, on my G6 and 2074 i havent touched the ceramics for 6 months as they are pretty spotless.
Easy to forget pipes (until you have clear ones), they are a pain to do but do reduce flow surprisingly quickly.
:thumbup:
 
Thanks for the reply. That helps a lot.

Floss will definately be my problem right now. Had went through a lazy spell there and my tank let me know it.

Need to get my backside back into shape. Planning and taking a layer out the filter though just to see difference in flow with and without the ceramic rings in addition to my substrat pro, and also get myself some purigen
 
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