How to keep eaten wood from polluting your tank?

[bsmith]

Its not a huge issue but it is annoying. I find myself having to fan the plants in my 183 setup every time im down there to get the sawdust off the leaves. IME with keeping many planted tanks I have found that when detritus/organics rest on plant leaves it provides an excellent substrate for algae and if left unchecked will get bad quickly.

The tank in question is a 37g filtered by an eheim 2213 and 2215. I have foam prefilters on the intakes of both filters.

I cant think of anything else. Other than vacuuming the substrate every week. Is that the only answer?

[racoll]

Add a powerhead to ramp up the water movement maybe?

Alternatively, maybe re-think keeping these kind of plecos in planted tanks?

[megacat]

Have you tried taking the pre filter foam off the intakes?
Your filtration should be enough for a 37gal. Power head would help as well. Maybe a mini hydor.

[bsmith]

Add a powerhead to ramp up the water movement maybe?

Alternatively, maybe re-think keeping these kind of plecos in planted tanks?

That was my next attempt, a power head. As far as not keeping them with plants there are two reasons that would be hard for me. One, I just cant imagine any water fill glass container with out plants and two, plants complete ant ecosystem with fauna with the production of O@ that is put directly into the water and also because of their ability to "eat" excess organics in the water providing a cleaner more healthy environment.

I completely understand but could not live with bare bottom set up's.

[bsmith]

Have you tried taking the pre filter foam off the intakes?
Your filtration should be enough for a 37gal. Power head would help as well. Maybe a mini hydor.

Ill try taking the pre-filters off but the thought of all that wood in a canister filter honestly frightens me. I am going to try to find a used Koralia 1. I use them in other tanks and find their unidirectional flow the reason for them being tops for power heads in my book.

[megacat]

Have you tried taking the pre filter foam off the intakes?
Your filtration should be enough for a 37gal. Power head would help as well. Maybe a mini hydor.

Ill try taking the pre-filters off but the thought of all that wood in a canister filter honestly frightens me. I am going to try to find a used Koralia 1. I use them in other tanks and find their unidirectional flow the reason for them being tops for power heads in my book.

I completely understand.

My canisters get clogged very fast. I clean them out once a month at least. That's what comes with keeping large and small Panaque.

I like the hydor koralias a lot. They are great at adding constant flow to a tank. They are no good for use with timers though. Heard lots of bad things about them and timers. Plus the new and improved ones don't have that pin that used to pop or fly out when they were turned on. They really did improve the design.

[wrasse]

Hi stlpleco,

sorry for going off-subject, but do you realise that with a quick glance your avatar looks like some kind of giant tick on your hand

[Jools]

Some

Otocinclus

maybe?

In Panaque tanks, of which I have 3, I use a certain type of snail which eats the sawdust almost "at source" and turns it into something a bit more like conventional waste. The other thing I find is to have large sized gravel and never touch the substrate while also ensuring any fish movement doesn't stir up too much waste into the higher than normal in the water column filter intakes. This works, but with low stocking levels.

I think both solutions, however, are not for a planted tank; so I'd agree that wood eating plecos aren't a great choice for one.

Jools

[megacat]

Hi Jools

What type of snail would that be?

[Jools]

Asolene spixi.

Jools

[dw1305]

Hi all,

Have you tried taking the pre filter foam off the intakes?" & "Ill try taking the pre-filters off but the thought of all that wood in a canister filter honestly frightens me."

I think you are right to be frightened. Keeping the pre-filter on and syphoning the wood waste out is a much safer option. With apologies for the cross-post, I'll try and summarise the important bits below, but this article <http://plecoplanet.com/?page_id=829> covers this subject area in much more detail.

The reason for not sucking the wood waste into the filter is to do with the way that the "biological filtration capacity", oxygen and BOD (Biochemical Oxygen demand) interact. Organic matter (OM) is broken down utilising oxygen and eventually producing ammonia. The more waste is in the aquarium, the larger the "ordinary" heterotrophic bacterial colonies will grow, and potentially the more oxygen they will consume.

Summarised as:
Oxidizable material + heterotrophic bacteria + nutrient + O2 → CO2 + H2O + oxidized inorganic such as nitrate (NO3) or (Sulf(ph)ate) SO4.
&
“Nitrification”, (the biological oxidation of ammonia (NH3) to nitrite (NO2-) and nitrate (NO3-)).
NH3 + CO2 + 1.5 O2 → NO2- + CO2 + 0.5 O2 → NO3-

The contribution of organic matter to the BOD depends upon its composition, but a food source consisting of structural carbohydrates, such as the cellulose and lignin (wood for example), will be decomposed very slowly and contribute relatively little to the BOD, compared with more protein(prawn) or sugars/starch(sweet potato) rich food. However because saw dust and wood based faeces is physically bulky, when it gets into the canister filter other factors come into play.

A filter, which is extracting a large amount of faeces and saw-dust, may still appear to have reasonable flow rates but may be working at a fraction of its capacity, because the water is being rapidly de-oxygenated during its initial contact with the wood waste at the "start" of the filter media. Dissolved oxygen concentrations above 1 mg/l are essential for nitrification to occur. If DO levels in the filter drop below this level nitrifications slows, or ceases altogether, with potentially catastrophic effects.

cheers Darrel