# What's in your filter?



## fish_gazer (Nov 9, 2017)

Because it seems to be an ever-evolving thing for me, I enjoy reading about it from other perspectives.


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## fish_gazer (Nov 9, 2017)

I have three trays in my canister filter.

Where the water enters from the tank, currently I have a double bonded medium course/medium fine floss pad and carbon in the bottom tray, a standard floss pad, zeolite and Purigen in the middle tray, and a bio-sponge and ceramic rings in the top tray before the water goes out.

The zeolite is just an experiment, I'm not sure I'll stick with it. And I have so many porous rocks in my tank that I'm not even sure I _need _the sponge and ceramic rings. But it seems that every time I open my filter I do something different, so it's a work in progress.

I guess I'll get to wherever I'm going, eventually.


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## Oscar6 (Aug 4, 2017)

Carbon should never be an every day component of your filter. Carbon, dust specifically has been found to be a contributor to HITH in cichlids. Use the space the carbon takes up for more bio media.


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## fish_gazer (Nov 9, 2017)

Oscar6 said:


> Carbon should never be an every day component of your filter. Carbon, dust specifically has been found to be a contributor to HITH in cichlids. Use the space the carbon takes up for more bio media.


Wonderful. Just when things begin to clear up, they get murky again. Huge sigh.

Thanks for the response. I would have never known.


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## fish_gazer (Nov 9, 2017)

Annnd, as with anything on the internet, it seems as if for every mention that carbon should not be used in the aquarium, there is one that disputes it.

I suppose it should be taken under advisement, until I can form an opinion on the matter based on further research and observation. Blah.


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## Lee79 (Nov 7, 2017)

I have never run carbon in my filters. My reason is simple. If I didn't't add any chemicals, why do I need carbon to filter the water? Or if I am adding chemicals, why would I run carbon that is just going to filter them out? Just seems wasteful either way.

Only bio media and mechanical filtration for me.

I do use a .5 micron carbon block to filter my tap water though.


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## DutchAJ (Dec 24, 2016)

I run 2 eheim 2217s and run their recommended eheim mech -> coarse filter pad -> eheim substrat -> fine filter pad. Their media isn't the cheapest, but it seems to last so long that the cost doesn't bother me. I also don't run the carbon pads based on the info *** read here.


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## noddy (Nov 20, 2006)

If you're going to use Purigen, it should be the last thing in the canister that the water passes through.
Eg. all sponges, mech, bio and filter floss should all be before the Purigen. I have it sitting on top of the pillow batting at the very top of my Eheims.


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## fish_gazer (Nov 9, 2017)

noddy said:


> If you're going to use Purigen, it should be the last thing in the canister that the water passes through.
> Eg. all sponges, mech, bio and filter floss should all be before the Purigen. I have it sitting on top of the pillow batting at the very top of my Eheims.


I had it like that actually. I changed it because I moved the ceramic rings to the top tray where the sponge was, and there wasn't room to get the Purigen in there as well.


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## noddy (Nov 20, 2006)

fish_gazer said:


> noddy said:
> 
> 
> > If you're going to use Purigen, it should be the last thing in the canister that the water passes through.
> ...


It will clog up and need to be regenerated much sooner.


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## BlueSunshine (Jul 13, 2014)

We use our canister filters for mechanical filtration only. I do not waist space trying to put bio filtration,ceramic ring and the sort, in our canisters. We use sponges and lots of them with different types of bonded filter pads. When it is time to clean them, I take the water hose and blast them out. Our bio filtration is in our tank, substrate and rocks.
As a side note, beneficial bacteria grows very well in sponges. We've been using carbon for years with no problems at all.


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## joselepiu (Jul 22, 2017)

fish_gazer said:


> The zeolite is just an experiment, I'm not sure I'll stick with it.


what is it for???... :-? :-? :-?


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## caldwelldaniel26 (Jun 11, 2017)

joselepiu said:


> fish_gazer said:
> 
> 
> > The zeolite is just an experiment, I'm not sure I'll stick with it.
> ...


Zeolite removes ammonia from the water and should only really be used in emergency situations at best. It really limits the capabilities of the natural biological filtration that occurs in well cycled aquariums.


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## joselepiu (Jul 22, 2017)

caldwelldaniel26 said:


> It really limits the capabilities of the natural biological filtration that occurs in well cycled aquariums.


how??? :-? :-? :-? ...
why??? :-? :-? :-? ...


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## BlueSunshine (Jul 13, 2014)

joselepiu said:


> caldwelldaniel26 said:
> 
> 
> > It really limits the capabilities of the natural biological filtration that occurs in well cycled aquariums.
> ...


Well think about it......if it absorbs ammonia, what is the bacteria going to eat?


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## caldwelldaniel26 (Jun 11, 2017)

BlueSunshine said:


> joselepiu said:
> 
> 
> > caldwelldaniel26 said:
> ...


Exactly


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## fish_gazer (Nov 9, 2017)

BlueSunshine said:


> joselepiu said:
> 
> 
> > caldwelldaniel26 said:
> ...


That is succinctly put.


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## gillmanjr (Jan 27, 2017)

noddy said:


> If you're going to use Purigen, it should be the last thing in the canister that the water passes through.
> Eg. all sponges, mech, bio and filter floss should all be before the Purigen. I have it sitting on top of the pillow batting at the very top of my Eheims.


I do the same thing with my Purigen but I am beginning to think that doing this reduces the effectiveness of Purigen. Purigen is designed to remove stuff from the water that will eventually break down and form nitrate (therefore it reduces the amount of nitrate produced). It doesn't remove nitrate directly but it does absorb waste that eventually break down into nitrate. So if you are running Purigen last you don't really get this benefit because everything else in your filter is either trapping this stuff or breaking it down into nitrates before it reaches the Purigen. So I think that running Purigen in a separate filter (either a reactor or an HOB) that is taking water directly from the display tank is the better way to go with Purigen. I think you can get more benefit from it that way. I might be wrong, its just a theory of mine. But I am probably going to try this and see if I'm correct.

The problem with doing this is that it will probably reduce the overall amount of ammonia that gets to your biological filtration. So if you do this the stability of the filtration system might become dependent on the Purigen.


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## noddy (Nov 20, 2006)

gillmanjr said:


> noddy said:
> 
> 
> > If you're going to use Purigen, it should be the last thing in the canister that the water passes through.
> ...


To be honest, I have started running purigen in an A.C on my 40g long grow out tank. It lasts about a month before it needs recharging whereas when it's in my canisters on a 210g tank it goes unchecked for months as it's such a pain to disconnect and open up the cans. I'll bet it only lasts a week in that tank.
I'm going to stop using it all together on the big tank unless I can figure out some way to run it in an emperor 400.


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## snorkel2 (Sep 30, 2005)

I have 2 sunsun 704b filters (great filters by the way)
both are setup the pond guru way with the bottom tray having all mechnical 2 blue foams and a fine.
the top 3 trays are all bio with filter one having 5 liters of biohome ultra and filter 2 having 4 liters of Pond Matrix and 2 liters of standard matrix.

The biohome is excellent but a bit pricey.
Pond matrix is better than the standard matrix as the pieces are larger and there is less common rocks mixed in.


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## fish_gazer (Nov 9, 2017)

I did in fact remove the carbon. I have plants and after reading that carbon removes trace nutrients, it explained some things with my rosette sword.

I removed the zeolite two seconds after BlueSunshine's post. I would've removed it faster, but I wasn't home yet. 

After doing so I arranged my filter to have two bonded pads in the bottom, two fine pads then the purigen in the middle, and a sponge and ceramic rings in the top.

I have since added a second canister filter (as well as upgraded to a 75 gallon) and have it arranged the same way, except there is only one fine pad in the middle, along with Seachem's bio-matrix instead of purigen.

The difference in water clarity was almost immediate. My aquarium is set up as a room divider, and now when you're looking through it, the water is almost not visible. It's awesome!


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## fish_gazer (Nov 9, 2017)

Update:

I removed the Purigen during this week's filter change and with it went the last of any chemical filtration I had. There is literally no difference in the clarity of the water.

The nitrates are holding steady around 10 - 15 depending on which color you believe you're seeing, or it could be 20 (that whole thing is weird!).

In holding the bags of Matrix and ceramic rings in my hands the other night, it occurred to me that the surface area of the rocks in my aqaurium dwarfs that of what's in my filters. Like, it's not even close. I therefore might remove them and go full mechanical except for the sponge, but I don't really see the need to do that at this point since they're already there and not harming anything.

Anyway, we didn't have all of this back when I was in the fish game a million years ago. But in going back dozens and dozens of pages in the forums here, I think I'm right where I need to be, so thank each of you for your input.

I have 8 males in my 75 and I'm good with that.


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## BlueSunshine (Jul 13, 2014)

Finding filtration that woks best for the tanks you have is part of the fun. There are so many ways to set up tanks and filtration it is mind boggling. In the end.... all a fish keeper needs is what works best for their setups.
Keep us posted and thanks for the update!!! :fish:


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