Gale Pearce wrote:

As for a bit of trivia. I put all my sponges in a net laundry bag. To
clean the filters I just pull out the bag and there it is... You can
run the bag through a washing machine, I just throw the spunges on the
driveway and hose them down.


Hi Carl - I clean mine much the same way, only I leave them in the bag and
hose them down on my driveway at the season end. A couple of times a season,
I just stick the garden hose in the top of my barrel and back flush some of
the crud out the inlet fitting at the bottom of my barrel as I slosh the
bags around inside - about 10 min total - I also don't use sponge, I use
scotch brite type pads
Gale :~)




I use floor scrubber pad (cut up) for my bio-mechanical. I did a
"skippy" type and it just did not work for me. Guess I was/am not
'mechanical' enough. The water just barely tirckled into the filter and
it was so ugly! I come in from the bottom of my Rubbermaid stock tanks
using the existing hole. Working just fine now.

W. Dale
Wilmdale Pond - http://home.pcisys.net/~muaddib

Gale Pearce wrote:
What I learned right off in this room was to not clean filters with

anything

but pond water. Any type of filter also acts to some degree as a bio

filter

and you don't want to kill off the bacteria on the filter that breaks down
the fish waste. For mechanical filters you want the water to be able to
flow through them but you don't want to wash them off to the point of them
being 'sparkling clean'.


Yeah - I keep reading that here as well, but I've been cleaning my media
with my garden hose for 10 yrs and have never had a problem (chlorine, not
chloramine in my water) the pads Carl and I are using are almost impossible
to completely clean and some bacteria must be left behind and the filter
never skips a beat - no green water, so I guess the filter recovers before a
problem happens - I just started mine yesterday -(Wed) looked like a swamp
:~( and can see down 12" today - I know I will see bottom by Sunday -
Also it is an upflow type and also works as a mechanical filter
Gale :~)

Chloramine doesn't kill filter bacteria either. I've been cleaning
fishtank filters in tapwater for years in my choraminated (is that a
word?) water. I've never seen a hint of ammonia or nitrite afterwards.
I think you'd need to soak the filter media in chlorine/chloramine for
quite a while to actually kill off the bacteria.

--
__ Elaine T __
__' http://eethomp.com/fish.html '__
rec.aquaria.* FAQ http://faq.thekrib.com