hi i am a beginner and because of the lack of instructions i would like to know how to clean my nano filters. do i clean all, some or none, and how often do i clean them and how do i clean them. can anybody help me please. thanx. brad

I don't know much about marines, but for filters, you just clean part of the media (sponge/bio-balls, etc) once a month in OLD TANK WATER whilst carrying out a change.

I'd wait until a marine advisor or someone with a marine tank confirms or corrects that though.

If the filters are mechanical only and you have live rock for your biological filtration then its important you kill any bacteria in the sponges to stop them going biological. This means unlike freshwater you wash them in tap water, or replace them each week.

The actual method depends a lot on the set up of your tank, its inhabitents and the type of filtration medthod you are following. Do you have live rock? Coral? Skimmer?

thank you for your help. brad

yes i have a large live rock and just recently got a small one too. so i clean the sponge, do i clean the bio balls because when i picked them up lots of wite bits, like part of the ball started floating into the tank, so i put them back and left them. thanx. brad

okay well assuming that you are going to use the berlin method for filtering your tank you need about 1kg of live rock per 5 Liters of water, plus a skimmer.

The skimmer takes out the fish poo and the live rock bacteria breaks down the ammonia and nitrite very efficiently. If you dont have a skimmer you have to do larger or more regular water changes.

The sponges in the nano filter are then mechanical only and need to be taken out each week and rinsed under the tap to kill of any ammonia eating bacteria as if they get properly established they will start to chuck out a lot of nitrate.

Bioballs in the filter suggests that the nano tank filter is designed to be a suplimentary biological filter though.

It could be they're setup in a way that doesn't produce the nitrate spike like sponges doo. The bioballs should be rinsed in a pot of tank water to get rid of the debris.

So that was a lot of waffle, Sorry .
I'll sum up.

When you do your weekly water change take the bioballs out and rinse them in the old tank water. Then take the sponges out and rinse them under the tap.
Put the bioballs back and then give the sponges another rinse in the old tank water to make sure any chlorine and tap water is gone.
Put the sponges back in and you can get rid of the old water.

thank you for all that waffle.
your advice was very helpful and well understood.
thank you again for your help.
we will try it this weekend, when we do the waterchange