Habitat - Indoor :: Ceramic Media in filter

[Starscream]

Ok, so I have 2 fx6's to work with. And I am trying to fixure out how much ceramic media I need in them. 2 trays in one will be ceramic, and all the trays in the second will be.

I am looking beween the g nodes and the biomax. Once in there, how often do I need to change it, the biomax says 3 months.

[Starscream]

By my calculations I need 8 boxes of the 1.25l gnodes, no idea about the biomax, the boxes look about the same size.

[VeipaCray]

You never need to change it. Just rinse it lightly when you do your monthly filter maintenance. It's just porous inert material that provides a high amount of surface area for nitrifying bacteria to colonize. It really can't go bad. Of course the manufacturer wants you to replace it. It's expensive. You rinse it (under tap or dechlorinated water) to keep the outer pores clean and not blocking the inner pores.

I used 2 of the large boxes of bio max for each FX5 tray.

I'd also suggest you set both filters up the same way so you can alternate cleaning cycles between them. The filter media sticky on the equipment forum has our suggested media loads for a turtle. I haven't updated it for the fx6, but the fx5 is the exact same for media layout.

[Starscream]

I considered doing them the same, but I figured that I would just be throwing money away in carbon every month.

[VeipaCray]

You are going to throw money away in carbon every month. Do you want to throw 100% of it away from one filter or 50% from each of two filters? It's the same $.

[Starscream]

So if I had it in both filters, I would only have to change it every 2 months? If not I suppose that I am not understanding. All the carbon has to be changed every month, if I have twice as much, I have to change twice as much.

[Starscream]

Oh and the biomax boxes I am getting are the 1100g ones. Yes it is pretty expensive.

[VeipaCray]

Regardless of where you put the media if you have two filters you'll need enough media for two filters. Let's say a FX6 takes 1 lb of carbon and 4 lbs of bio media (I'm making up numbers)... you're going to need 2lbs of carbon and 8lbs of bio media to get proper filtration out of two filters. Now where you put that media is up to you. You can put 2 lbs of carbon in one filter + 3 lbs of bio media and have the second filter take 5 lbs of bio media. It's all the same. Carbon only lasts about a month. Spreading your media evenly across both filters will give you the most optimal filtration. In addition, you can clean each filter once a month and offset them by two weeks. Filter A gets cleaned on the first of every month and Filter B gets cleaned on the 15th. This way if you kill off some nitrifying bacteria in the filter cleaning process... the other filter is still maintaining a fully established bio colony and you shouldn't see any spikes in your cycle.

[Starscream]

I see what you mean now. Thank you. I was not planning on adding any carbon. 1 tray in one fx6 is currently carbon and seems to be enough to do the job. I thought that you were advising adding a second tray of carbon. My thought was that if I ran all biological in the second filter, it would a) give me more bio, which I will need a lot of, and b) make cleaning cheaper, as the bio doesn't get replaced. Should I clean 1 whole filter every 2 weeks, or 1 tray of bio media and all the sponges? I don't really know about bacteria. I have to take the trays out of water to clean them, does that kill the bacteria or do I have some time, like 30 minutes out of water and the bacteria are dead?

[steve]

If you ran one filter with just bio media, you can probably go months with out cleaning it. However, it seems like it might just be better to run 2 identical filter setups and alternate their cleaning/maintenance… like every other month or so. If the bio media completely dries out, then you will have to start over. Though with two filters running, I wouldn't be concerned about that.

[Starscream]

I am definately going to alternate the cleaning. That is the wisest move. I think that I am pretty set on no carbon in the second filter though, it just makes more sense to me.

[steve]

Maybe link the cleaning of that filter when you do water changes then. Carbon will be the media you can use to remove chlorine and chloramines.

[Starscream]

Just an update on this, I went with 5700 grams or 10 liters of ceramic media. Cost like 70$. I tried to seed the new ceramic media with some of the old so hopefully it comes up to par soon. Hopefully that will be enough. I have enough room to add an ehiem if the need arises.