Help With My New (secondhand) Filter Please?

[rabbut]

I actually dissagree with the above comments about Juwel filters. I ran a 98 for years in a horrendously overstocked tank, and the filter coped very well with both mechanical and biological filtering (By overstocked, I don't mean 1.5" per gallon, I mean like 100 2-3" fish in the thing BTW)... it was a really high maintenance set-up with twice weekly 50% water changes to keep nitrAte in check, but I never had issues with Ammonia or NitrIte, and the water was always free of floating particles Very good filters IMO

The heaters have a reputation for being un-reliable, but my original 7 year old heater is still going strong. They are made by Hydor too, the firm that make the only external in-line heaters on the market and that firm has a good reputation for good heaters. Go figure

 

[mattbond]

so far ive found the new rekord range to be fine, iv put some of juwel's ceramic "cirax" in a filter bag and stuffed it in the bottom as well as the sponges
i change my filter floss every two weeks (probably more than i need to)

i think you should clean/replace those sponges, theyre meant to be blue lol

 

[ellena]

I have cleaned them They really look like the plastic is black though. This tank is about 5 years old from what I was told-have they always been blue?

 

[mattbond]

it might be that the original owner just replaced the sponges with ones that were the same size, still does the same job really, get hold of some ceramic filter media if you can and put it in a filter bag, then put it into the filter. ive done that simply because i dont think there's enough biological filtration in a plain juwel filter.

iv got at the bottom a bag of cirax (juwels own ceramic media), some peat, the black carbon sponge, the 2 grades of blue sponge and then the floss on the top,
you have to squeeze it down, but it works fine once its done