How often you rinse your hydrosponge filter?

[chinoz]

???

[henryD]

It depends on how crowded your tank is and what kind of food you feed.

I find that tetrabits and gel food in general tend to clog up my filters. So I will rinse them when I feed them those items on the same day.

If it is frozen food or CBW I rinse once a week with the usual weekly maintance.

I think you will be able to see when the filters seems dirty.

I know of people who rinse daily with the water the remove from the tank when they are doing their daily w/c.

[chinoz]

i feed them, tetra bits , cbw, and frozen bw. i guess i'll be rinsing it everyday then.. Thanks HenryD

[April]

Be careful you dont overrinse..
use your aquarium water in a bucket to rinse. not under the tap. ;)

[chinoz]

oops i rinse it with tap water last night.... :-\

[dred]

I don't know if this is correct. But it's working for me.

I rinse by dunking the sponge in the waste water. While it's underwater, I brush off the outer edge, the squeeze it once. I don't release until it is back inside the tank.

TnT, the concern is losing or killing your beneficial bacteria. Rinsing too thoroughly can wash too many away, and rinsing in the tap can kill the colony if water is chlorinated.

So, if you did in fact rinse it under the tap last night, you need to watch your nitrogen cycle carefully again and be prepared to change water while your colony rebuilds.

[wall_o_fish]

What i"ve heard in this thread seems pretty much what I do too: I rinse when my filter needs it. "Needs it" depends on whether or not it looks and feels clogged with crud. I've noticed I have to rinse more when feeding messy foods like a beefheart mix than when feeding live and frozen foods. MOre waste = more rinses. I rinse about every other day when doing water changes.

To rinse, I gently squeeze out the sponge in a bucket of the tank water until the water easily flows in and out of the sponge.

scott

[fcdiscus]

I rinse every 6 weeks to 10 weeks, depending. Gotta keep that good guy bacteria alive and working! Frank :o

[barron]

I clean mine every day, just with the vacum hose when cleaning the floor. I agree with Frank and squeeze only once every 10 days or so. Feed flake, bloodworms, a little Beef hearts, misc.

Barron :)

[Rick_May]

I rinse mine about every 4 to 6 weeks and I squeeze the heck out of it, like 5 minutes or until the water coming out is good and clean.. I think you would be hard pressed to harm the bacteria by squeezing it.