Max Filter Life

[shortymet55]

Whats the max time I should keep a filter cartridge in? Mine has been in 4 weeks. I did a 100% water change and tank clean 2 weeks ago, because my water quality was beyond awful. I never some bacteria is held in the gravel, so i did not change out the filter, because i wanted to keep as much bacteria as possible. After four weeks, is this enough time to restock the gravel with bacteria? Am I safe to put in a new filter? Its a 10 gallon tank, not overstocked nor under. The reason i ask, is my ammonia is getting a little high (about 1ppm), so im trying to see what caused this. My guesses are the bacteria has not caught back up yet, or the filter is so bad its not cleanign the water good anymore. What do you all think i should do?

 

[Teelie]

Bacteria house themselves in the filter where they get a fresh supply of nutrients (ammonia, nitrites, etc) so you should never change out all of the filter media. Usually filters come with a carbon pad, bag, sponge or similar thing. I'd just remove it and replace it with something very porous and clean the filter monthly in old aquarium water.

 

[Tolak]

You only need to replace it when it is falling apart. When I was running hob filter I had some filter sponges that were over 7 years old, and still in one piece. Just rinse the filter media in old tank or other dechlorinated water.

When it is time to replace the filter cartridge, sponge, pad or whatever there are a couple of tricks to minimize or eliminate any cycling problems. Don't feed the fish for 24 hours before changing the media, and feed lightly for the next week, about 1/4 normal. Float the old media in the tank, this gives the nitrifying bacteria a chance to rehome on the new media, and also lets them do some bio filtration during the transfer.

I'm assuming this is a newer tank, if you let the media dry out during the water change you may have damaged the nitrifying bacteria. During tank maintenance keep the media in a container of old tank water, it will keep for several hours this way.

What make & model of filter are you running, and what do you mean by restock the gravel with bacteria?

 

[shortymet55]

My filter is a Aqua-tech 5-15 power filter (knock off brand from walmart, but it gets the job done. Ive been looking at it seems to resemble a brand called Penguin??? something like that.). This is a few month old tank. I did not let the filter dry out, I moved the entire filter over to a smaller tank, while i cleaned the bigger tank. Then, i did rinse the filter and the other white thing (not sure what it is, but it says not to replace, just rinse every once in awhile, so i did that) in the water i took from my tank. By restocking the gravel, i heard bacteria can grow in the gravel, and since i did such a big clean, i probably killed most of it, so i used the same filter media, because from that i hoped to let the bacteria flow threw the water and start growing in the gravel again. Now, im hoping there is bacteria in the gravel, so if i replace the filter cartridge, there will be enough bacteria in the gravel and white filter, so that my bacteria count does not fall back too far.