Ok, this is the first time I have owned canister filters and I am a little bit overdue for a cleaning I think. The 2 canister filters I have I bought back in March and haven't been opened except to prime the pump when moving from one tank to another. I know that you should not turn your filters off for any longer than an hour. I guess I'm asking for the easiest way to do it without losing any bacteria? I do plan on taking the carbon out and adding more ceramic rings when I do this. As always, thanks in advance for the always great advice.

I don't use canister filters any more but I have done over the years and this is how I used to clean mind.

Equip yourself with two buckets. Fill both buckets with existing tank water. Then remove your canister filter to take it outside. you will probably find that there is a lot of sludge amongst your biological media in the trays. You know those strainers that have lots of holes, you put your vegetables or rice in them to drain the water?I have a metal one and what I used to do is pour the media into this strainer and then dunk it in the bucket of water to get rid of the sludge. When the majority of the crap has been removed but the media pack in the tray out and place it in the other pockets of water to keep it wet. Then just do your other trays and when you've finished it all back together and you are ready to go. It shouldn't take any more than 20 minutes at your media will not dry out.

You have got to remember that canister filters will collect dirt. If you leave them too long they could start working against you.

if you do not have any issue yet with your water, and if the flow rate
remain the same, i won't bother cleaning the canister..... leave it alone
until you notice the flow rate had diminish.... that is then you can also
remove the carbon and fill it with some biological media....

What about the mechanical filter pads? Should I try and remove any of the buildup on those with the tank water as well?

brichter04 wrote:


Yes, you must clean all of the media. If you let them get too dirty then you could start running into problems where the filter starts slowing down, or even gets blocked, or your nitrate levels may be difficult to control. This is the reason why we always recommend putting lots of filtration on an Oscar fish tank, small filters will become absolutely saturated with that very quickly and you will end up with poor water conditions.

I sometimes take a large bucket, fill it up with water straight from the tap, add some water conditioner to remove the chlorine and then give my mechanical filtration a really good clean because sometimes the sponge becomes absolutely filthy and it will take two or three buckets of water to get it clean. Mind you, my mechanical filtration is probably a lot bigger than what you are using.

I would like to get in a regimen of cleaning one of my filters when I do the water changes. I'm figuring I would do a water change once every 4 weeks. Vacuum the gravel real good and clean one of the filters. This way, the filters are getting cleaned every couple months. The way I figure it, better to overclean then underclean as long as it doesn't do any harm to the fish and/or bacteria. I plan on doing water tests weekly to make sure levels don't get too crazy.

what about hood filters, as they never slow down, when best to clean, as i over cleaned and had to recycle, now i dont know when to clean

You will always have to clean mechanical filtration, that will collect dirt and debris no matter what filter you are using. With canister filters the water is flowing through all the media, small particles will find their way through mechanical filtration, unless you put lots of very fine media in to catch these small particles. Then you will have to clean the filter much more often because these very fine pads got to be very very quickly.

Some of the hood filters have bio wheels that shouldn't collect solid waste, so in theory anyway becomes saturated with there like a mechanical filtration, so maybe you shouldn't have to touch these. However, we'll know that it doesn't always work how we want it to.

brichter04 wrote:
[quote I'm figuring I would do a water change once every 4 weeks. [/quote]

better test those waterconditions frequently, it may turn out you need nore frequent waterchanges then once every 4 weeks...

I clean my canister once a month - similar to how OFL described (only I have but one bucket) and it works fine....

1) Fill bucket with tank water
2) Rinse mechanical (course) with strong tap water - I clean it until all the muck and debris is gone. I don't care if I kill off any BB in the mechanical filter.
3) Rinse biological media with tank water
4) I replace the fine filter pad

I dump the rest of the canister water out, rinse out the empty canister and put all the baskets back. The biological media is never out of the water for more than a few minutes.

I can do the whole process in less than 15 minutes; and so far have not experienced any bad spikes in water quality that could indicate I killed off too much bacteria. I find having a second set of hands really helps - like another family member to speed up the process.

Cleaned both the canister filters today. Was only planning on doing 1 but after I got through with the first one and realized how easy it was, I just went ahead and did the other one. I moved the one out of the 90 over to the 125, so now I'm running 2 canister filters in my 125. I took out the carbon and added more ceramic rings. Now I have 2 trays of ceramic rings in each of my canisters. Water looks real clear. Going to do a water test here in a few and see if there are any changes in levels. They've been back up and running for a few hours now. I'll let ya know if anything spiked or changed.

Ammonia spiked a lil bit. Not much. .25. My Nitrates are pushing 40. May just be due for a water change. Did the ammonia spike because I took the carbon out?