Throwing Away Filter?

[toomie]

I have just set up a new 3 gallon acrylic tank for one of my bettas. I am doing a fishless cycle. The filter that came with the tank is a Whisper internal filter, and it came with only one cartridge to insert inside it. I am assuming that was all it was supposed to have, but the filter is filled with carbon, and it says to replace the filter every couple of months. My question is, once this tank is cycled, if I change the filter, won`t I be throwing away all of the healthy bacteria I just spent weeks cycling the tank to get? Wouldn`t I have an uncycled tank all over again?

 

[youngfisher]

Ermm, if you manage to get the sponge or what not from the filter to the other it should be fine
If not, I would just get an internal filter that you dont have to keep changing, and cycle that through - but you wont need to change it again.

 

[Bobtastic]

I have just set up a new 3 gallon acrylic tank for one of my bettas. I am doing a fishless cycle. The filter that came with the tank is a Whisper internal filter, and it came with only one cartridge to insert inside it. I am assuming that was all it was supposed to have, but the filter is filled with carbon, and it says to replace the filter every couple of months. My question is, once this tank is cycled, if I change the filter, won`t I be throwing away all of the healthy bacteria I just spent weeks cycling the tank to get? Wouldn`t I have an uncycled tank all over again?

Yes you would. It sounds a little like the Elite Stigray which apparently has cartridges that contains Zeolite and Carbon. I believe that you get remove them and replace them with filter floss, so you may be able to do the same with your filter.

 

[waterdrop]

Its extremely common after reading lots of stuff here from the many experienced fishkeepers to realize with disappointment the your filter designer was focused much more on how to get you back to the retail isle buying replacement cartridges than he/she was on designing a good filter for you and the fishtank! Most hobbyists don't know how to go about optimizing their filter purchase or their filter media choices until about the third time around probably!

But people have come up with lots of creative fixes and improvements once they've realized all this, so there may be ways you can get a lot more detailed about knowing what media you've got and how it could be replaced/optimized within the filter box you've got. At the easy end of things, sometimes there are multiple types of cartridges that fit and one or two of the choices are of a better biomedia type. Or, with more difficulty, I've read of people slitting open the containing part of various types of cartridges and replacing the contents with media that's different from the original.

The really small filters for betta tanks are kind of a special case. There are bunches of betta lovers here on the forum and lots of them have experience with the few really good little filters out there. Hopefully one will come along for you!

Carbon is not primarily a biomedia. It crumbles over time and goes out with the water changes, taking its bacteria with it, unlike the preferred biomedia choices of sponge and ceramics. Carbon's primary use is to be kept on the closet shelf in waiting. If you have a situation where medications need to be removed or wood tannins cleared or some strange organic smell must be gotten rid of, then carbon is your friend, but it only last 3 days max and then should be removed and trashed. In this correct role, its known as a "chemical filtration media."

~~waterdrop~~

 

[toomie]

Its extremely common after reading lots of stuff here from the many experienced fishkeepers to realize with disappointment the your filter designer was focused much more on how to get you back to the retail isle buying replacement cartridges than he/she was on designing a good filter for you and the fishtank! Most hobbyists don't know how to go about optimizing their filter purchase or their filter media choices until about the third time around probably!

But people have come up with lots of creative fixes and improvements once they've realized all this, so there may be ways you can get a lot more detailed about knowing what media you've got and how it could be replaced/optimized within the filter box you've got. At the easy end of things, sometimes there are multiple types of cartridges that fit and one or two of the choices are of a better biomedia type. Or, with more difficulty, I've read of people slitting open the containing part of various types of cartridges and replacing the contents with media that's different from the original.

The really small filters for betta tanks are kind of a special case. There are bunches of betta lovers here on the forum and lots of them have experience with the few really good little filters out there. Hopefully one will come along for you!

Carbon is not primarily a biomedia. It crumbles over time and goes out with the water changes, taking its bacteria with it, unlike the preferred biomedia choices of sponge and ceramics. Carbon's primary use is to be kept on the closet shelf in waiting. If you have a situation where medications need to be removed or wood tannins cleared or some strange organic smell must be gotten rid of, then carbon is your friend, but it only last 3 days max and then should be removed and trashed. In this correct role, its known as a "chemical filtration media."

~~waterdrop~~

Ok, so I am thinking of cutting a piece of Fluval foam and putting it into the filter as a permanent fixture, does that sound ok? I`ll just change the carbon bag whenever needed and keep the piece of foam in there, just maybe rinse it out in the aquarium water when needed.

 

[pippoodle]

with my small internals i remove the catridges - dont use zeolite or carbon - waste of time and money
i cut foam to the full size of one cartridge and half the size of the other cartride and then use floss to fill in the other half

then they only get rinsed when they need it and the floss replaced when it's dirty

SO yes cut the foam but i wouldn't use the carbon until you need to remove meds -- i like having tannin leaching in my tank but a lot of people use it to remove the tannins from wood etc


I have the stingray filters in small tanks - my shrimp tank and works perfectly well in there after remplacing the cartridges with the sponge and floss - used one in my betta tank to

My stingray 10 supports this stocking 55ltr HEX 15 pygmaeus,6 hasbrosus,30 brigitte rasboras,5 micro crabs,cherry&CB shrimp

perfectly well with regular maintenance

 

[OldMan47]

You have the option of just rinsing out that cartridge and re-using it. The fact that the carbon trace in one of the little whisper filters will be exhausted in a few days does not mean that the cartridge needs to be replaced, it just means that you won't have any chemical filtration. All of my tanks are running with no chemical filtration so I do not find that situation to be a problem. I recently threw away a Whisper cartridge that was well over 4 years old because it was falling apart. Before I tossed it, I slid a new cartridge in place for a few weeks and put the pieces of filter media that were still intact into the bag that fits around the plastic frame of the filter. I did not put the carbon into the filter fabric bag because it would have kept me from using the old filter bag to jump start the new filter cartridge. I hear that the filter cartridges that come as a separate plastic frame and filter media bag are no longer being made so my filter will probably only last me about 10 more years. I still have 3 refills that can fall apart before I run out.