Stop Making This Mistake with Your Filter During Water Change
- Nov 17, 2024
- Anshika Mishra
- 24 0 0
Sometimes, you'll see a water change with the filters remaining on and still running; sometimes, you'll see a water change with the filters and no flow. But what's the right way?
The reasons to leave your filters on are to continue supplying oxygen to the tank through the surface agitation and two, so you don't have to mess with your filters. The reason to turn it off is to avoid a siphon breaking your hoses, which, upon restart, could potentially cause a nasty dirt cloud of junk and gunk to come back into your water right after you fill it with fresh, clean water.
Kaveman Aquatics makes enormous (80%) water changes in its tanks because that benefits the specific tanks. Because of these giant water changes, he needs to turn his filters off at some point.
The Solution
It starts by draining your tank and leaving the filters on as it drains. This helps supply as much surface agitation as possible so the tank can have as much oxygen as possible for the fish.
While draining the tank will be quick, refilling about 170 gallons can take some time. You want your fish to wait in oxygen-rich water. Thus, the filter stays on.
However, the filter has to be turned off at some point, and that is right when the water level is about to drop below the filter intake.
If you allow your filter intake to emerge, you will break the siphon inside your hoses. When you go to restart the filter, it has to prime itself again. If any of you have experience with this, you have to restart your filter. But you want to avoid this problem altogether. If you don't fix it, your tank water will get cloudy, filling the tank will the dirt cloud of trapped craps that was in the filter and hoses spitting it back into your water column.
Now they will be trapped again, and nothing will change except for the nitrates you remove from your water changes. So do yourself a favor - if your water change amount drops below your filter intake, close the intake valve before it happens and unplug the power from your filter.
The Alternate Solution
If your water changes progress pretty quickly and you can get the water level to rise past that intake soon, then you don't have to power off the filter. Just close the intake valve before the intake itself emerges, and during refill, wait for the water level to rise past the filter intake and open the valve.
But if filling your tank takes time, you don't want the filter motor running the whole time with the intake valve closed. During refill, remember you don't have to wait for the entire tank to fill back up before restarting the filter.
Just wait for the water line to rise past the filter intake, and then you can start it back up. Now, there's a method to power up the backup as well. You want to do it in the reverse order.
First, open your intake valve to release that trapped siphon through your hose and filter. You may even hear some gurgling sound as the filter fills back up again. Then, once that gurgling sound is over, you plug it back in.
This will restart your filter as if it was never turned off.
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