CLEANING CANISTER FILTER MEDIUM,PARTS

[ganesan]

Just a couple of days I cleaned my JBL Cristiflow 1501 canister filter after about 7 months.I just squeezed the pre filter pads a couple of times in siphoned tank water and there were 2 trays of bio balls,1 tray of ceramic rings...all Jbl products.I noticed that the ceramic rings and bio balls were slightly light brown color and so just immersed each tray into the siphoned tank water in a plastic container a couple of times till water coming out of the tray did not have murk in it and then washed the empty canister can which had lot of muddy colored sediments in tap water and soon arranged the trays one above the other with the ceramic ring tray at the bottom and the 2 bio ball trays above that and finally the prefilter sponge tray.then I added some Jbl filter start over the prefilter sponge and closed the cover and started the filter.Its working well.My question is that should I have cleaned the bio balls more as they were slightly brown color(i did not assuming they were some beneficial bacteria) and the rubber hose pipes were not so dirty when I viewed it with a flash light the entire length.Perhaps next cleaning i would clean the hose pipes too.

[100fuegos]

To your question the answer ins NO. It is ok to immerse the whole tray several times in water to get the crud out of it.

I have two of those and find the amount of filter material to be not nearly enough to fill the trays. I personally use the prefilters (by the way they are small) as prefilters only and clean them very well under running tap water. I did replaced the ceramic rings (not any good to hold BB as they are the type intended for mechanical filtration only) by good Volcanic rock that makes a really good job as mechanical filter and holds quite a lot of BB. Added some Expanded clay balls to the second tray and the third was filled to the top with the sintered glass balls provided by JBL. The coarse sponge was removed from the upper tray and replaced with some more sintered glass balls.

You should use prefilters on the intakes and clean your canister much more frequently. I clean mine every six weeks but I do clean my intakes prefilters everyday under hot running tap water.

On a side note JBL just released a new distributor plate inlet that allows us to trash once and for all the darned rubber seal. This plate replaces the standard and the seal. See this link JBL distributor plate 6012700 (http://www.jbl.de/en/spare-parts-products/detail/4805/jbl-distributor-plate-inlet#sizes)