Thank you very much! I'll try that straight away as soon as I can figure out how to do it properly.
The fluval filter has 4 'cases' of filter media, the top two are Ammonia Remover Media and the bottom two are carbon. Am I looking to pick out only one of the cases to make room for the filter wool and if so, which of the two kinds? Also, are there alternative 'sponges' that I can put inside the filter as well? The ones that came with it don't seem to be doing a very good job. My LFS recommended that I clean the filter out as soon as the algae bloom was cleared up - when I went to clean the sponge media inside it, it looked like it was about brand new, there wasn't any discoloration or chunks of debris washing out as I put them under the shower head.
Thanks again, looking forward to a response.
OK, looks like another case of bad advise form the lfs. Where to start? You are currently depending upon the ammonia remover to keep your fish alive. IMO, this is a bad idea. When your ammonia remover is "full" of ammonia, it will seace to remove ammonia from the tank. This will mean the ammonia will build up to damgerous levels very quickly, if left unchecked. If it were up to me, I would replace the ammonia remover with ceramic media. The ceramic media is a good place for nitrifying bactiria to develop. These bactiria collonies "eat" the ammonia and resultant nitrIte, and turn it into less harmful nitrAte. The bactiria colonies are far more forgiving, in the sence that they do not get "full" of ammonia as the ammonia removing media will, and thus there is a reduced risk of an ammonia build-up. The ammonia removing media will also remove some medications from the water, so when you need to medicate the tank, it would have to be removed. This puts your fish in a dangerous environment. This is because there is nothing to remove the fatal ammonia from the water. In the medication situation, you have a major problem. Leave the fish to die from their illness, or try to do something about the illness, and loose them anyway to ammonia poisoning. It would be a loose-loose situation, unless you do large twice dayly waterchanges. Similar problems can occur with carbon. After 4-6weeks, carbon becomes saturated. After becomeing saturated, carbon can dump it's contents back into the tank.
Although the above is not bad advise from the lfs, it is probibly a lack of advise from them. Same with your methord of cleaning the sponges. There are chemicals in the domestic water supply, that kill any bactiria upon contact. By rinsing the filter pads under the shower, you kill the bactiria breaking down ammoina, that live in the sponge. Details of a better way below
lecture over
lol
Now for the better half of the post
If I were in your situation, I would replace 3 out of the 4 media boxes contents with ceramic media. This will allow the filter to act biologicaly to clean the tank water of polutants. Next, I would faze out the ammonia remover slowly, allowing the bactiria in the ceramic and sponge media to take over from the ammonia remover. Monitor ammonia and nitrite leavles regularly. Dont't let leavles of either go above 0.25ppm, and don't remove more ammonia remover unitil both drop to 0ppm. Once the forth box is empty, I would fill it with filter floss/wool/cotton. This IMO would give you the best ballence of filtration. Remember to rince any media in the filter in old tank water, rather than tap water, so that you don't kill the bactiria living on it.
Further reading
nmonks wrote a biginers guide to filter media >[post="139488"]here[/post]<.
sorry for the long post and lecture
HTH
rabbut
! pH is at 7.6 - Ammonias are 0 and our Nitrites are 0 as well.
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