Canister in reef aquarium

[thebanker]

I recently hooked up a Rena XP1 to my 55g to run carbon and a sponge filter to remove particulate material. What's the best way to maintain it to reduce the effect of nitrifying bacteria building up in the canister, producing nitrates?

Is rinsing the sponges and carbon once weekly enough?

The canister runs:
- coarse sponge
- medium sponge
- activated carbon
- fine filter pad

It's helped big time with reducing skimmer output, and cleaning up my water visually.

I'm also using a skimmer and phosban 150 reactor.

[Sugar Magnolia]

I used an xp3 on my 30g for a couple of years. My routine maintenece was cleaning weekly...sponges rinsed in hot water, replace carbon, rinse canister and replace fine filter pad. Once a month I would replace the sponges. Doing the routine weekly cleaning kept the detritus build up to a minimum, which is what you want.

[Michael]

i think the important thing is to not allow the canister sponges to become live, because if you do, and then bin the sponges in the garbage, you could crash the biological system, clean weekly for sure, i think canisters are unnecassary in marine aquaria, but contradicting that comment, if used correctly are not a problem as reef gossip suggests.

i think in your case it will work fine if not allowed to become live.

[Adam_T]

I keep my 55 gallon Reef Tank running on 2 Marineland Magnum 350 Canister filters, and that is all. I clean them and change the filters out once a month, and change my carbon every 3 months (real nice carbon heh...). My levels are consistently at 0 (ammonia, nitrite, nitrate) with no known spikes since I've started my tank. Keeps the water clear and adds a bit of extra directional flow in the back of my tank.

+1 for canister filters!

[glnkng]

I'm for them too. I change my media once a month and never have problems.

[Michael]

i think if the media is in the canister too long its best to wash it through in water from the tank, a month maybe ok, anymore could be a problem as the tank filtration could crash, my dad made the same mistake with his pond recently, he decided to remove all media in his filter and wash in cold tap water, he lost 31 of his koi, i told him to just wash a small bit of it and to preserve the rest so the system can still cope with waste, ok were talking marine here not pond, but the principle is the same, so i say wash weekly or bi-weekly in tap water to keep the sponges clean and dead, or monthly or 6 weekly in tank water to remove detitus and keep them live. from the 2 posts suggesting monthly so far it sounds like its ok, but a little risky perhaps.

[jolemi]

i've also posted about my new cannister filter. I did my first was today and will do every week. dunking any filter sponges i intend to keep in cold RODI water to stop it going biological and pull off any large pieces of detritus by hand. when the start looking messy i'll go and buy some new sponges for my 205.

John