my canister filter

[project5k]

so, it dawned on me last night on the hour+ drive home, "hey you big dummy, you havent touched that canister filter in like a month, maybe thats why the red slime crap is comming back"

so, i went home, opened it up, and sure nuff, it was shagtasticly nasty, i felt like such a failure, but i manned up, and dug in, i took everything in that thing out except the bio stars, and cleaned it out, it was full of all kinds of brown stringy stuff, it kinda reminded me of fresh water fish poo.

anyway, so i put some of the white nitrate rock stuff in one of the baskets, a phosphate sponge in another, and left the bio stars in the 3rd...

plugged it all back in and let it run...

hopefully the red slime stuff will go away, and some of the green hair algae may slow its groth now, cuase i'm sure that the canister was just pumping out all kinds of crap...

so my question is this, since i already have the thing, and it runs, and is all but silent, i'm thinking i wanna keep it, if nothing else it helps add to the water flow in the tank... but my question(s) are as follows.

what can i realistically use this thing for, once i get my big sump and fuge built and working?

could i put some LR rubbel in the baskets and just leave it there? wouldnt the fish crap build up and cause the same problem again in the future?

i know lots of people say once you have a good fuge, to just dump the canisters, but it seems a waste, i mean it's gotta serve some usefull purpose... i just dont wanna be putting $100 worth of media in it every 2-4 weeks like the manufacturer suggests...

i guess i could just clean it up real nice and try and sell it, perhaps i could make a couple $$ off it to put towards a better proteine skimmer... hmmmm how much could i get for a rena 3 basket unit?

 

[ccCapt]

what can i realistically use this thing for, once i get my big sump and fuge built and working?

A freshwater tank? :mrgreen:
I personally wouldn't use it for anything, except maybe spot cleaning your rocks before you do a water change. Fill it with some filter floss and suck away any loose crap.

 

[bjohanson1234]

Take all the media out and use it empty. Increases tank circulation and can be aimed where you want. If the canister is empty, it wont collect that much gunk

Brian

 

[Bifferwine]

You could put it to use a couple days a month by running carbon in it... You don't want to run carbon all the time, but it is useful every now and then. Other than that... Hmmmm...?

 

[project5k]

yea, so basically get the fuge and dump the canister, ok, got the picture... hehehehe

i suppose if i cleaned it up real nice it might be usefull on my fresh water tank... course 300+gph on a 20gal tank, might be more like a washing machine than an aquarium..

i do like the vacume idea... i could make up some mechanical filter media, and then use it to do my sucking for when i do my water changes, rather than just using the syphon sand sucker thing...

oh, hey, wait, i got it, i can use it as my algae scrubber.. it has a nice spray bar, i could just have it handle that.. hmm suck out from the fuge, and dump back into the fuge.. after running down over the "screen" hmm i dunno,

 

[bjohanson1234]

there you go
that is a good idea

Brian

 

[project5k]

which one? or any that means its not in the tank any more?

i think i'm gonna bust out with my kill-a-watt and see what it pulls power wise, and then see what some of the other little pumps i have laying around pull, cause if its pulling a bunch of power, i bet i can come up with a better algae scrubber pump and just use this spray bar..

hmm
decisions decisions..

well i did just put new media in it last night, so i guess i'll let that just run for a while till i get the rest of my stand and fuge built, then i'll pull it out...