Wholesale Matting

Do you think this needs to be done?

do you think i need to take my filter mat out of the tank?they do provide you if you wish to buy one new mats and say that it will need to be replaced and washed sometimes but you have to pull up the gravel and the tray that the tube which the airstone goes through to do this,plus if i ever wash anything from the tank should i always do it in some water that has been removed from the tank no the filter mat is like a foam wooly thing,similar to what you get in packaging

Public Comments

1. yes you will need to wash it but i would do it to often mabey once a year have a good clean , but it will be a messy job, and will total mess up the tank , if it is all working well at the moment i would leave alone , also the mats are plastic and will last for a very long time , so should need to be replaced for a good few years . you could take the tubes out and just give them a wash . hope this helps
2. that's is why i did not want to go that way plus i have live plants that make a mess of the mat.i prefer canister or a bio wheel.but once a year should do fine as long as you are cleaning your gravel regularly
3. So you have an under gravel filter, You must have gold fish because not many other fish can handle the stress of your tank psykeling when you first got it. Now that your tank has all that good bacteria growing on that pue under the gravel, do not do a 95% water change. Do much less unless your tank is planted with plants. Your plants will collect the good bacteria and then when you get rid of it, U can start seasoning a new bio spunge filter. The air stone should always be inside a tube and never more that two inches under the water unless you have an air flow valve. I think gravel filters are for the birds (plants) and not for the fish. Not to mention they make that white viberiting sound from the air pump.
4. When washing the gravel or gravel stone ect.. you do not have to use the water from the tank, but I use distilled water, you can buy it at any store. You can take the filter mat out if you want but I would use a gravel cleaner often and make sure there is no damage to the mat, if you do that you should be fine to clean the filter mat about 2 x a year. Other people are saying 1 time a year but I would suggest twice simply because of build up and I don't know what kind of tank you have. Hope this helped.
5. Is it a regular tank with an undergravel filter or a biorb with the mat and filter built into the bottom. A regular undergravel shouldn't need to be cleaned if it's working properly and you vacuum the gravel regularly. The biorb, I'm not sure. **
6. Never replace or clean the under gravel filter mat. Apart from the mess, that's your tank cycle completely knackered. It's meant to be a mechanical aid to natural filtration, (speeding up in your tank what nature would do in a pond). If you remove the bottom half of the tube that connects to the mat, you will have a big job reconnecting it. Filter material should always be rinsed in old tank water to retain the good bacteria. Everything else that comes out of my tanks gets boiled and scrubbed with an old toothbrush; you wouldn't be saving anything good, the tank water itself contains the good stuff. Fitting a power head instead of an air stone will improve an under gravel filters performance, but canister filters are much better at cleaning. If you decide to change, leave the mat under the gravel, pull out the up riser(s) and stick an ornament over the hole. Pointless making a mess for nothing?