# Cleaning bio in canister filter..How often???



## bgallodoro24 (Feb 6, 2012)

Bump... anyone


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## DaveK (Jul 10, 2010)

I clean the bio media in my Eheim canister. I take a bucket of water from the tank and rinse it off in that, so I don't kill off the bacteria base. You need not get it 100% clean. In fact you don't want to clean it that well, just get the worst out of it.

Do NOT use tap water, as that will kill the good bacteria on it, and then tank could go through a cycle again.

As for how often, it's depends on how dirty the media is. It could be from every time you clean the filter to once a year.


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## fusiongt (Nov 7, 2011)

bgallodoro24 said:


> As the thread topic states, how often should you clean biological area of filter? I have the fluval g6 and clean mech filter weekly. Everytime i turn it off too clean and then back on the filter spits out a fair amount of what looks like brown flake food which the fish actually eat. What is this, is it normal?


I have a G3 and here's what I've been doing. I would be concerned about cleaning things like the pipe and tubing (run a bristle through it) along with disassembling the thing so you could get to the motor/impeller. I like to take that out and make sure there's no gunk on it. Then of course do the mechanical filtration part. I do all those cleaning things every 3 weeks (basically once a month) and haven't bothered cleaning the biological filtration yet (mostly because it's been less than a year since I owned a G3... I wouldn't be concerned about cleaning it any more often than once a year). 

The Fluval G filters are nice because you can clean the mechanical filtration fast but there's still lots of gunk that builds up in the pipes and in the impeller so try cleaning that once a month. I see from the digital read out that the flow increases dramatically when I do it.


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## samamorgan (Dec 31, 2011)

I never clean the biological media, it never accumulates any dirt in my filter. The filter pads are a different story though, i give those a thorough rinse and squeeze in water change water. The flake food stuff you're seeing is probably accumulated dirt/algae inside your filter tube chipping off when you restart your canister. Fish a string through your filter tubing with a piece of cloth tied to it and pull all that gunk out. I wish someone made tubing that wouldn't accumulate crap. This is why it's nice to have clear tubing, you can see how gunky your tubes are and if they need cleaning or not.


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## Patriot (Dec 22, 2010)

Sometimes i get scared to restart my filter after seeing all that stuff blown lose. I don't rinse my bio media just the filter pads. I also kill off any snails that are living in there.


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## JRMott (Jul 30, 2010)

I just cleaned my canister, about 5.5 months since I last cleaned it. It was disgusting.

I'm going to clean it again in 2 months and when I do I will determine if I can let it go a bit longer.


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## chiefroastbeef (Feb 14, 2011)

I don't clean my bio stuff either, especially since I've switched to the eheim substrat pro (the little ceramic balls), debris flows right past the balls and doesn't stick on like ceramic rings would. Expensive, but I love the substrat pro, much better use of space since the balls can really pack into the filter.


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## Jeff5614 (Dec 29, 2005)

I'll give mine a quick rinse in tank water every two or three months but nothing much ever seems to come off it. The prefilter on my Eheim 2076 is another story though. I rinse it about once a month and it's usually pretty dirty so I guess it's doing its job, catching all the crud before it gets to the biomedia.


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## talontsiawd (Oct 19, 2008)

I really never "clean" it but I have a filter pad in the middle of my canister. I dump the bio media in a bucket with tank water. I just swirl it around a bit. I decided to place all my mechanical media at the top so if it seems to be trapping debris, I will continue to do what I have been doing. If not, I just will skip cleaning it.


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## Lurch98 (Oct 7, 2011)

The "gunk" in the vinyl pipes, while unsightly, is just increased surface area for the nitrifying bacteria. As long as it doesn't look too crappy, or get so thick it reduces flow, it's actually a positive thing.


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