Washing Your Bio

[benzjamin13]

Okay...let's see how this goes...

I wash my Biological filtration with tap water. There! I've said it. Never had a crash, never had an issue with Nitrates and all that. I tend to believe that there is plenty of BB in my tanks to sustain itself until the media can repopulate itself. I've been at this for 25 years and used to clean my filter every 3 months...now a days it seems more like 7-10 months.

I have ALWAYS cleaned/washed my filter with tap water. When people were adamant about never use tap water, I tried to change. I would wash my bio with tank water, but then I would find myself filling my freshly cleaned filter (canister) with tap water...kind of defeats the purpose of rinsing with tank water, doesn't it?

Am I playing Russian Roulette or is it a matter of "if it works, it works?

I don't suggest anyone all of a sudden change their maintenance habits, it just works for me and I'm just curious what everyone's opinion may be on the subject.

 

[CarpCharacin]

I think it depends on the bio media, and how far in the media the bacteria is, but I think that you should be careful when doing that. I usually rinse bio media with conditioned water if I rinse it at all, in my moving bed pond filter, I don't need to rinse it.

 

[altums85]

i do the same, whatever works for me is what matters. i dont do other things that most people do either in this hobby.

 

[RD.]

How harmful, or not, cleaning your media with tap water will be is entirely dependant on the disinfectant residual in ones tap water. We have chloramine here, coming out of my taps on average @ 2 ppm, but higher during spring run off etc. My tap water will kill off a significant amount of bio media, so I always clean everything in a bucket of dechlorinated tap water.

Some locations will have very low disinfectant residual, which explains why some folks can get away with cleaning in straight tap water, while someone at 3 ppm or more, cannot safely do the same.

 

[neoprodigy]

why you need to clean the balls?

 

[CarpCharacin]

why you need to clean the balls?

If fish poop gets trapped and keeps the water from flowing. I use k3 kaldnes in my moving bed pond filter which is pretty much self cleaning since it is constantly moving it doesn't really allow debris to become trapped, so it doesn't need to be rinsed, I just flush out the filter every once in a while.

 

[benzjamin13]

How harmful, or not, cleaning your media with tap water will be is entirely dependant on the disinfectant residual in ones tap water. We have chloramine here, coming out of my taps on average @ 2 ppm, but higher during spring run off etc. My tap water will kill off a significant amount of bio media, so I always clean everything in a bucket of dechlorinated tap water.

Some locations will have very low disinfectant residual, which explains why some folks can get away with cleaning in straight tap water, while someone at 3 ppm or more, cannot safely do the same.

I live in California...everything is treated as if it had the plague.

 

[PYRU]

Seems risky but its your tank.

 

[CarpCharacin]

I agree, I think it's a risky practice, and I don't think it's that hard to just use conditioned water, but it depends on the concentration of disinfectants in the tap water.

 

[Hendre]

I always just gently swirl my bio in a bucket of tank water. Much less risky in my opinion and very easy to do. I'd rather take the extra few minutes than risk killing my bio.