Filters In Fish Cycle

[Anthony_19]

hi, im doing my fish in cycle on my juwel rio 125 and was just wondering do i change any of the filters or when do i change them,there is only 2 sponges that need to be changed and the rest just need cleaned.what do you guys think ?

 

[waterdrop]

Most of us hobbyists never change out our media unless its been years and its literally falling apart! All of the sponges should just be squeezed out in the tank water that was just removed from the tank during the water change (tap water would potentially damage some of the bacteria.) During cycling (Fish-In or Fishless) its ideal to mostly avoid cleaning the sponges in the filter because you don't want to disturb the process of the young fragile bacterial colonies building biofilms on the biomedia (the sponges.)

After cycling is successfully completed, filter maintenance is something you can start off doing once a month but then adjust as you observe whether you think it needs to be done more or less frequently given your fish load, your filter size, your tank size etc.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Anthony_19]

Most of us hobbyists never change out our media unless its been years and its literally falling apart! All of the sponges should just be squeezed out in the tank water that was just removed from the tank during the water change (tap water would potentially damage some of the bacteria.) During cycling (Fish-In or Fishless) its ideal to mostly avoid cleaning the sponges in the filter because you don't want to disturb the process of the young fragile bacterial colonies building biofilms on the biomedia (the sponges.)

After cycling is successfully completed, filter maintenance is something you can start off doing once a month but then adjust as you observe whether you think it needs to be done more or less frequently given your fish load, your filter size, your tank size etc.

~~waterdrop~~

ok.thanks for that.another question is,i put and few real plants in the tank at the weekend and the end of one of the plants has came off and small white fluffy balls are floating around and the fish are eating them.is ths good are bad and what should i do ?

 

[Essjay]

With my Juwel tank, the instructions said the blue sponges are the ones that should be washed, and the green nitrate and black carbon sponges are the ones it said to change regularly. If this is the same as yours, don't use the black sponge, replace it with a blue sponge as you don't need to use carbon all the time. As for the green sponge, most people are of the opinion that doesn't work either. Leave that in permanently and treat it as a blue sponge.

 

[OldMan47]

All of the sponges can be treated as mechanical and biological filtration only. The fact that they have embedded a small amount of carbon in a sponge won't prevent it working as a biological filter. The only thing that I ever throw away is a totally disintegrated filter cartridge or some filthy filter floss. Everything else gets cleaned and returned to the filter. Do not get carried away cleaning either. The brown stain on a filter sponge indicates where the bacterial colony has built up. It is not a thing to try to remove.