[AquaticLife] Replacing internal filter
Hi Noura,
First I want to address your comment about not running both filters at the same time. This is not a good thing to do. When you turn off a filter, water quits flowing over/through the filter media and the good N-bacteria start to die off due to lack of O2 and food. This happens after only an hour or two so unless you are alternating the filters every hour, you aren’t helping things by turning them off.
Now on to your new filter. Can you take the filter media from the old filter and fit it into the new filter? If yes, then do that and run the new filter so the water flows over the old filter media first, then through the new filter media. After a couple of weeks, you can keep both filter media in the new filter but alternate cleaning them so one of them stays fully cycled at all times. This will also give you extra filter media to use in the event you ever need to set up a new tank, you could remove the extra “cycled” filter media and run it in the new tank filter so you will have a big head start on getting that tank fully cycled.
With a UGF, a lot of the N-bacteria live on the surface areas of all of the gravel so changing the filter media does not affect the cycle as much with a UGF.
Lenny Vasbinder Fish Blog - http://GoldLenny.blogspot.com
Category: Philippines Internet Koi Society
