Juwel Medium Filter - Planted Aqaurium

[Outzen]

Im kind of a newbee, and just started a dark period with my new Juwel vision 260 tank. Substrate - abt 60% of the tank has a 1/2 - 2 inch layor of pond soil (from front to back) capped with at least twice the thickness of black sand (JBL Sansibar Dark, 0.2 – 0.5 mm.), and the rest of the area is covered with sand and blac gravel (2-5 mm). Put in some big rocks, and 5 smaller roots and one big root (red wood - think mangrove). For further info see my journal .

Began a "black start" today. Have kept the standard juwel internal filter, although think it takes up too much space! The filter came with

• BioPad - Filterfloss
• BioCarb - active charcoal sponge
• Nitrax - Nitrate remover
• bioPlus - Fine-pored filter sponge
• bioPlus - Coars-pored filter sponge

I asked my local aqa store abt suggestions for filter material and he suggested that I skipped the Nitrax and Biocarb sponges and instead buy 2 caskets of Juwel CIRAX - CERAMIC GRANULATE - which I did, putting the bioPlus - Coars-pored filter sponge on top, followed by the bioPlus - Fine-pored filter sponge, and the White biopad filterfloss, and the cirax granulate as the last material. But there is still room in the first filter "container" and havent used the second!!

What filter material should I add to the current setup, and should I change some of the filter material when I put plants ... and eventually... fish in the tank?

(PS: have also posted this in the planted tank forum)

 

[erwin123]

I asked my local aqa store abt suggestions for filter material and he suggested that I skipped the Nitrax and Biocarb sponges and instead buy 2 caskets of Juwel CIRAX - CERAMIC GRANULATE - which I did, putting the bioPlus - Coars-pored filter sponge on top, followed by the bioPlus - Fine-pored filter sponge, and the White biopad filterfloss, and the cirax granulate as the last material. But there is still room in the first filter "container" and havent used the second!!

What filter material should I add to the current setup, and should I change some of the filter material when I put plants ... and eventually... fish in the tank?

(PS: have also posted this in the planted tank forum)

In UKAPS, I learnt that this filter media is as good as "Cirax Ceramic Granulate". Actually after coming to UKAPS, I removed most of my Seachem matrix since it mostly justs blocks the water flow through the filter (aka pail with attached pump)

bio media for fluval 305

Anybody know of a great bio media to put in my fluval 305.

www.ukaps.org

 

[_Maq_]

It's not easy to be a newbie in this hobby.
From suggestions provided by fellow aquarists - 50 % are worthless, 49 % are not bad, but work only in correlation with other variables about which you did not ask, so you do them differently and the result is bad.
From among information provided by vendors and YouYube and similar - 110 % are commercials of which 100 % are lies or half-truths.

Your worries about filter media are pointless. Just insert a foam pad or two and keep the water flow freely through your filter to make the water in the tank moving. (This advice belongs among those 49 %. You did not ask about the substrate... and so many other things which can ruin your project.) Fingers crossed.

 

[LMuhlen]

Since you already have the foam with activated coal, might as well use it until the carbon saturates... I'd put it back inside when you plant the tank and turn on the lights, to help prevent algae.