Well the Black Out Curtains finally came off today after 4 days. I can't say it has been total 24/7 Black Out because I have been feeding the discus at night time with no tank lights on only the house lights.
So today with everything ready to go I set out on a bit of a mission to do some maintenance, a lot of maintenance. I set myself a total time of 4 hours. The kit I had ready to go consisted of:
5 Litres of Siporax
2 Pairs of Eheim pipe connectors
1 Brand new UP Inline Atomiser (New version)
1 Brand New C02 Art Bubble Counter
Bubble Counter Fluid
First I removed the Black Out Curtains and things were looking much better. The internal UV Filter has been running 24/7 with the oxygenating feature turned on. Then off came the Black Smoked glass lids, then the lights removed. I siphoned out 60 lires of water, 20 with some debris and what was left of any algae, which wasn't much. The other 40 litres was kept for rinsing out all the filter substrate from both filters.
I disconnected everything and removed both filters. First I removed all the filter medium from the Eheim Professional 2 filter and replaced all three baskets with a mixture of brand new Siporax and some old Eheim Filter medium. Rinsed out the canister and flushed all the pipes clean, all mature filter medium was rinsed out in a bucket of tank water and the new Siporax was rinsed in the water to collect some of the bacteria.
I re assembled the Eheim 2 Filter and connected up the Eheim pipe connectors and fitted the new UP inline atomiser, 1 filter ready to go all done in less than an hour. Then I removed all the baskets (4) from the big Eheim Thermal Filter and placed each basket in a seperate bucket of mature tank water. I removed all the black plastic tubular filter medium and replaced it with brand new Siporax, again mixed with some of the old filter Eheim Clay ball medium. Overall I probably reduced the filter medium in each basket in both filters by a third.
Clive was right back on page 4 of this journal when he said there was far too much filter medium in both filters. The flow was becoming really slow and not efficient at all. So both filters now re assembled, I fitted another pair of Eheim pipe connectors on to the the thermal filter and placed both back in the cabinet. I rearranged all the positions of the inlets for both filters so there is now one either side of the weir. I removed the spray bar and fitted a wide spread outlet head on the Ehem Professional 2, connected up the new Bubble counter wth its new liquid inside.
I topped up the tank with a fresh lot of water with all my ferts, flourish Excel, Easy Carbo and got ready to get the filters going, just under two hours gone.
Then came the leak test, I connected up a vacuum pipe to suck the water up and into the filters, running the pipe into one of my 20 litre containers. Bingo all the water came flowing out into the container, no leaks
Very happy indeed, and the flow coming out of both filters is nearly double what was coming out before, and crystal clear. Turned on the thermal heater, temperature showing 25 which was a bit cooler than I would have liked but the heater kicked in and soon it was back up to 28 degrees.
Two hours to do all that, I was quite chuffed with myself. Now it was going to take another hour and a bit to clean up the kitchen and tidy up the mess from all the bits and boxes. A total of three hours later and I'm sat in front of the tank drinking a cup of tea and the discus are out swimming around as if nothing had happened, how good is that.
So I got my camera out and took some photos which are now uploading on to Photobucket. As soon as they are up I will post any of them that look decent. The first thing I noticed was there are lots of white flecks in a lot of the photos, this is the air bubbles from the UV Filter whizzing round the tank and mixing with the Co2. Tomorrow I will take a few more without the oxygenating feature on.
I am off for my tea while the photos are loading up.
Cheers and thanks for looking..
Steve.