will cleaning 2 filters cause mini-cycle?

[zeebo]

hi, I have 2 aquaclear 70's on my 54g trigon/corner tank. Cleaned one filter yesterday , and now notice water flow lousy in the other one, so it needs a cleaning now too. I know to stagger cleanings of all kinds , and I had to do this yrs ago and got a mini-cycle, water turned milky-white, not something I want to repeat.

I must clean this second one soon as it is not the good water flow needed. So, should i squeeze the sponge lightly and and srcub around the agitator area ? seems alot of mulm came out of the first one even before i squeezed it. Sounds crazy, but in this instance , should i save the mulm and return it to the tank? I do not want another mini-cycle . I just finally got a juvi L128 to begin replacing my losses back in Feb.

54g
2 ac 70's
2 air stones
fish : 3 large diamond tetra
11 harlequin raspbora
1 farlowella
5 dwarf rainbows
1 juvi L128
gravel substrate
vacuum once a week
wc -10% daily

thanks ,

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,
Ideally you would stagger cleaning them, but if flow is impeded that is more important, as the filter bacteria may become starved of oxygen.

So, should i squeeze the sponge lightly and and srcub around the agitator area ? seems alot of mulm came out of the first one even before i squeezed it. Sounds crazy, but in this instance , should i save the mulm and return it to the tank? I

It should be fine if you just give the filter sponge a good rinse but don't squeeze it out too much. I usually just make a suspension of the mulm right at the end of cleaning, and give the sponge a quick dunk into the suspension before putting it back in the filter.

seems alot of mulm came out of the first one even before i squeezed it

I'd up your cleaning frequency a bit. I like an easy clean sponge pre-filter on all my intakes, but I'm not sure if this is possible with your filters.

cheers Darrel

 

[zeebo]

thanks Darrel, yeah ,my maintence has been lacking ,recently broke a finger at work and got lazy on the filters, but have been doing my daily wc's and weekly vacuums.

Stupidly I purchased the L128 juvi (tank- born I was told) and put him directly in the 54g as my husband has taken over the 20g for platy and all their darn babies. You know what is coming next... just found ich on a few fish in the 54 and the only new guy is the phantom. My first dealing with ich,so gotta a lotta reading to do. :wb::wb::wb:

thanks for the response on the filter ,i knew the flow could upset the biomedia. and wish me luck ,please :wb:

 

[Lornek8]

L128 hasn only been bred a few times in captivity (all I've seen have been in Europe) so may not be captive bred. Though that really doesn't mean that much.

First advice, make sure its ich. Ich is easily the most misdiagnosed disease. Anytime anyone sees a whiteish foreign substance on their fish its immediately ich. Not always, and not everything that looks like ich will respond to the same ich treatments. Thus, before you go too far, make sure what you've got is indeed cih.

 

[Tener ds]

Thought my L134 had ich the other week, turned out to be small co2 bubbles.
She was hanging on the glass just above the defuser.
She dived into her cave and all the bubbles came off her.

 

[zeebo]

thanks Lornek and Ten, sounds like I need to get a pic , it is on 3 fish,not showing on the phantom. Tomorrow before medicating, will try to get a pic and post . See what you guys think. I am feeling so bummed and guilty atm.

Appreciate your repiles. thanks big-time.

 

[zeebo]

hi guys, tried to get pics but came out blurry, can't really see the prob. I looked at many disease pics and this does look like ich. It is on one raspbora, possibly a diamond tetra--hard to tell atm due to their coloring/glistening, but he as been flashing the gravel. A few specs on a dwarf rainbow top seamline? Phantom looks fine but know that may change soon.

I have temp up to 84d. Added one time only tbsp of aq salt. Aquari-Sol in half dose, added 2 more air stones and dropped the water line 2'' below the black rim line. Lights out during the day, some daylight gets in from the 5 windwos in that room, but still dark enough, feeding lightly every other day. The Aquari-Sol is copper based so is why doing half dose, but says it is mild and for sensitive fish. Hope i am doing this right , read so much and seems so many different methods. I had this med on hand ,as most of have meds and x-tra stuff, for ''just in case'' reasons. thanks , and responses appreciated if i am doing anything wrong here.