Hi everyone.

I currently have an Emperor 400 running on my tank. I'm moving away from carbon after reading that it really is not necessary. I was planning on putting some fluval bio-max in the extra compartments that come with the Emperor. Instead of using the standard carbon inserts for the Emperor, can I remove those and just shove some filter floss in there? Thanks for the advice everyone.

JP

if you are keeping Oscars, I wouldn't bother with floss, it will get clogged up in a few days. It's difficult for me to advise you because they don't sell those type of filters here in the UK. However, if the spare departments will take biological filtration, then I would put that in there.

How big a tank is it? I have the 400 on my 55 and it really did not keep up with the mess my Oscars make. I purchased a canister filter today to see how that works. As for media, I always use carbon. Then in the two cages I put a bio media to help grow bacteria when the tank is new. Later I change it to an ammonia fighting media. With the canister filter I can run up to 5 media at the same time. I am looking forward to that.

Filter floss will work if you're diligent about rinsing it weekly, maybe a little longer if you have a prefilter on the intake. For my two emperor 400s I bought the replacement baskets that foster and smith sell and used the foam that came with them but not the carbon--instead, I just cut blue bond to fit the frame. This gives a little mechanical filtration to catch some of the chunks (to keep the biomedia from getting too clogged to be effective) but doesn't require as much maintenance as filter floss.