Beneficial bacteria

[Lo1]

The F Zone filter holds 16 net bags of media.

The result of which is that I cannot draw enough water out of the tank to rinse the media out during maintenance periods.

Could water drawn from the taps and brought up to tank temperature, and then treated with prime and stability, removing the chlorine and chloramine, be used in place of the tank water?

I intended to rinse the sponges out in the tank water, but to rinse the media bags out as per the manner above.

Would the above method preserve the beneficial bacteria on the media in the bags?

[Chris_jennings]

I use dechlorinated tap water for filter cleaning all the time never had any problems.

[fr499y]

I do 50% changes on my tank and can easily rinse out all of the media in the sump in a single bucket of water (14L at most). Most of the 'dirt' will settle in the bottom of the bucket in a few minutes, so why not reuse it?

Dechlorinated water would be fine to rinse the media though

[SPACKlick]

I'm aware I'm resurrecting an old thread with a controversial take but... you can clean bio media in tapwater. There's a very short contact period, a low quantity of chlorine or chloramine. The amount of Bacteria you kill with it is trivial compared to the overall population.

Prolonged Soaking in tap water during a chlorine flush from your water supplier will cause a mini cycle but a heavy rinse is A-OK.

[Martinspuddle]

I'm aware I'm resurrecting an old thread with a controversial take but... you can clean bio media in tapwater. There's a very short contact period, a low quantity of chlorine or chloramine. The amount of Bacteria you kill with it is trivial compared to the overall population.

Prolonged Soaking in tap water during a chlorine flush from your water supplier will cause a mini cycle but a heavy rinse is A-OK.

I've read this 'idea' rinsing bio media in untreated tap water online recently and frankly I'm not happy with this advice. Your relying on your water companies chlorine, chloramine levels or anything else they decide to add to be low and constant. We all know how much you can be sure of what your local water supplier is doing with the drinking water. If you want to have a total, thorough clean of all filter equipment, then raw tap water is one way of doing it although not 100% guarantee of killing all the bacteria.

Since the early 1980's I have always used mature aquarium water to clean any bio media, whether sponge, sintered glass or bio balls and even pre filter only gets aquarium water. I only used raw tap water to clean equipment i.e. filter connectors, the impeller, impeller housing, empty trays or pipes. Even then, I always dry off everything with a clean kitchen paper towel or towelling before use.

[SPACKlick]

As I said, I know it's a controversial take. Back in my first forray into fishkeeping I had a handful of small tanks I did experiments in and one of the tests I did was washing the internal filter media (sponge and small ceramic cylinders) with tap vs tank water. It got to the point of adding camping water purification sachets that were chlorine based to the water before I rinsed the media with it and I can't remember exactly how much I added but the bacterial losses were minimal for rinse and even soaking it took a while to reduce them enough that there was a noticeable reduction in ammonia and nitrite processing. I'm far from the only person to do this test and I've never seen anybody have bad results with it. (Nextdoor Aquatics 2022, Bob MossNano Tanks 2023, Prime Time Aquatics 2021)

Now I generally do use tank water just for ecological reasons, it seems a waste to use potable water when I've usually got 100 litres or so of tank water to hand when I'm cleaning a filter. But from time to time I've rinsed the whole filter out with tap water and that's never been followed by a mini cycle.

[Lo1]

I have gone over to a couple of 10l buckets with one kettle of boiling water per bucket, one cap of Seachem prime and Seachem stability.

After a year out of stock on Amazon US, they have got the twin set of sponges back in, which are arriving today.



Next week I should get from Charterhouse Aquatics 5l box of Fluval bio fx:



Which will be split into two bags, the first will be added with half the old media, and in a couple of months I will swap out the rest of the old media for the other bag of bio fx.

This will be the set up:

Nick

[Lo1]

P.S.

Bentley also cleans out the sponges in tap water. He stated you would need the levels of chlorine found in swimming pools to do any damage.



However, I will stay with the middle way, a couple of buckets with Seachem prime and stability in.

Nick

[Staffylover]

Chlorine levels differ, I did try this once on my FX6 which has a lot of media to get through and I got distracted while the tank was draining so couldn't use tank water, luckily tank was only about half stocked, didn't expect it to be an issue after all it's not in contact with water for all that long but it did absolutely cause a mini cycle and I would never risk it again, so unnecessary for a bit of extra effort in dechlorinating the water I was cross with myself for several weeks afterwards.

[black ghost]

It’s not always a problem but as said, it’s a risk, which makes it irresponsible. Most of us do water changes at the weekend when tap water tends to have more chlorine / chloramine in it. Midweek, you’re more likely to get away with it.