rsretep
Members
My filters are mostly Aqua Clear and are filled with ceramic rings and sponges only
I wanted to bring this topic back up with a question.
Background: I have a Marineland 360 on my 55 gallon overstocked Mbuna tank ( 6 yellow tail aceis, 6 yellow labs, 5 rusties and 5 melonachromis and a couple of pleco's) and have it filled with the vendor supplied media, including two coarse sponges to start, followed by bagged activated carbon pellets, then bioballs, then ceramic rings, and finally, a finishing filter. I do weekly 40% to 50% water changes. Have no problems with water chemistry.
... and now, the question:
With the reading I've done on this site (great stuff), it seems that using one tray just for charcoal is not necessary given my water change frequency. Also, the polishing pads need to be mail ordered (while not that big a deal, would like to see if I can replace with something like filter floss. I was thinking of replacing the carbon in the tray with more ceramic rings, and replacing the polishing pad with filter floss. What do you think or suggest?
Thanks in advance.
in my 2 canisters i have red lava rock as the bio media. home depot sells a like a 40lb bag for around 10$ break it into smaller pieces for more surface area and i have that in 3 out of the 4 treas or baskets in my filters.
Whats in my filter...I had 24 Filamentosa Barb fry living amongst the filter pads and Eheim Pro bio media in my xp3.
OK, thanks for sharing the info.
I think I will replace the carbon with lava rock. Seems that there is the BBQ version and the landscaping version. Which do you use?
I'll keep the coarse sponges that came with the filter. I'll add some more ceramic rings to the tray, and use something like pinky filter media as the polishing filter on top. Since I just cleaned out the filter, this will probably not happen 'till my next cleaning. Thanks again.