Beginners Guide to Filter Media

[aquriuswannabe]

I am new to this and setting up a new tank with an Eheim 2180 pro 3 canister filter. I looked at the prices online for media and whoa...over a hundred bucks. what is the cheapest way to fill this thing for a cichlid tank. I will go to home depot, pharmacy's whatever......I have no idea about this stuff except that I don't want to spend $100 on it .

Thanks for your help!

 

[duipo]

Thanks for the info bro! really helped!

 

[rooski]

out of all the bioball designs , i like this one the best

and was wondering what their called and who makes them.

thanks

 

[yelner]

Wow nice..........

 

[LouisLeow]

nice write up, good helpful information!

 

[EOD]

As I read more and more into all these filter techniques and different ways to do things I find myself constantly looking around the house and at work for things I could use to make my aquarium better. I'm just waiting to find some type of filter media that's going to blow you all away completely on accident. The two black PVC pipes I have in my 40 long right now I found at work being used as pipe bombs...lol. I was thinking something in our electronics/IED making area that we get in bulk would be good as a filter media. I'll have to do some looking around lol

 

[Billox]

Hi, I'm new here.
I have a 50Gal tank and my filter is 2 overhead stacked over each other. the top contains 2layers of Japanese Mat and a pouch of Carbon and the buttom contains 3layers of foam and a pouch of Ceramic ring. This clogs fairly quickly. Any cheap suggestion to improve my setup? Thanks

 

[sponger_2]

has anyone else looked at this stuff called biohome? says it has 7300 square feet of surface area per kilo. that seems like a hell of alot of area.

 

[noledoc]

Something I've tried is to start with a two liter bottle, drink the diet Dr Pepper, wash and cut big holes in the sides. Careful to avoid cutting too much structure out. I put polyster material in it, wrap it with a small sponge like material as a mech element and put a PCP pipe in the top with an air hose so that it acts like a sponge filter. Clean the wrap-around sponge once weekly and it becomes a great mech and bio filter.

 

[NemoNemo]

Great Post!