hang on tank sponge filter cleaning question

[Magnum Man]

so, that's what I'm doing in the heat and humidity today.... honestly, I don't clean my sponges as often as I should, but there are 2 hang on tank filters on most of the tanks...

with the Tidal filters there is a holder that contains the sponges and bio filter media... I usually let the filter run, and just pull out the media cartridge... of course this increases the flow or turbulence, making the mulm in that area, go into the tank water... this seems to excite most fish... the water clears, even before I'm done with the next tank... I'm just wondering if I unplugged the filter, before removing the cartridge if more of that initial cloud, would get filtered out by the clean media??? or if it's going to cloud anyway, then i'm just going to let them run... thoughts???

 

[TwoTankAmin]

With my Aquaclears after I removed the media holder if the water in the filters is dirty enough I siphon it out and refill it with tank water. I see no use for biomedia in my ACs. All of them run with two sponges and or Poret foam I cut to fit. Between the two foams I have a piece of floss. I use the type that comes in a roll and be cuts to shape.

When Hagen began including "biomedia" with new filters I normally put it where I felt it belonged, in the trash. I even replaced the bio-media that came with my Eheim canisters with foam. I have 1 of 3 loaded with the Eheim media, 1 with AC sponges I cut to fit and the last one is loaded with 100% Poret foam. I had to use the final floss piece in it or else it left an open space at the top of the filter and the final solid piece which goes on top of the foam would sit too low.

Unlike the other two Eheims, the one loaded with the Poret only gets cleaned every few years when I see that output flow has slowed markedly. I think I have cleaned it twice in about 6-7 years.

I looked at Tidal many years ago and decided no thanks. I am not a fan of SeaChem for the most part. I do use their Excel and Equlibrium. The latter I use in heavily planted tanks which aso have shrim and assassin snails. What turned me off to SeaChem was Stability and the BS they write about the autotrophic bacteria that are actually in tanks and not in Stability. They lie about them as far as I am concerned despite having the truth about the nitrifiers buried in the library items. But even that is wrong because it says the nitrite oxidiers in tanks are the Nitrobacter wynogradski rather than the Nitrospira strains.

 

[Magnum Man]

all of my filters run a double sponge, and I fill the resovour with ceramic donuts, in coarse mesh bags...

I've not thought about separating the sponges, but there may be an advantage to doing that???

 

[TwoTankAmin]

One of the reasons I use so much Poret was due to the articles on Swiss Tropica discussung Poret and then on Aquarium Filtration.

The concept of mechanical filtration from most sites is a bit of BS to sell their mechanical media. Most of the things that mechanical media traps are organics. While a decent sized block of Poret is not the same thing as how things work in nature, it works the same, The organics entering the foam are in their largest size. As they get pilled into the foam their are microorganisms that break it down by eating some. this makes the particle sizes smaller and they move deeper into the foam and eventually emerge as silt in the space behind a matten filter filter. In nature there are larger critters which contribute to the process which are not in our tanks.

Moreover, in nature water filtration is also performed by free swimming and planktonic organisms such as phyto- and bacterioplankton, both in fresh- and saltwater habitats. However, the planktonic component of water filtration is undesirable in our aquariums because it would make the water cloudy. Algae blooms or infusoria explosions are usually the result of excess phosphates in an aquatic system.

from https://www.swisstropicals.com/library/aquarium-biofiltration/

The absolute clearest water I have in tanks is in the ones with matten filters. I can put a quarter on the outside of the back glass of a 33L and read the date on it through the front glass, the water and the back glass. Necause the foam blocks in an AC are much smaller than those in a cubefilter and especially a matten, I add the floss between the foams. I reinse AC sponges weekly but the cubefilters every 4-6 weeks and the mattens are cleaned in time measured in years.

I also do not rinse out floss, I replace it. Every now and them I spend 30 minutes cutting floos to size for all of my ACs. I have every size in multiples except for the 500 (aka 110) of which I have only one on my 150 gal. But it also has an Eheim 2026 and a H.O.T. Magnum on it.