Pepere

It has enough to handle the bacteria. But it clogs very often… my canister never clogs I service it monthly as per manufacturers recommendation, but I bet it could go several months without… but there is also more to filtration than nitrifying bacteria. There is also bacteria that consume dissolved organics that reduce cloudy water making it more clear. And mechanical filtration.l. Simply put the tidal was always irritating me and I was always annoyed with it trying to make it work as it should. I also addes internal filters in addition to the tidal in an effort to have flow to keep the CO2 bubbles in suspension… and that had to be cleaned it weekly too.. and between the two of them and an iar driven box filter for mechanical filtration I was using more electricity than my Canister filter does now and not doing as good a job, had more current carrying wires immersed in tank water and had three filters visible in the tank… Within a month of swapping out I no longer had doubts about the decision to go with canister filter…

Water will always seek the path of least resistance. As the obstruction through the filter media increases, proportionately more water will bypass…. realize that with the Tidan there is something like a half a centimeter of head between no restriction and overflow… 1 pound per square inch yields 2 feet of head. What fractional psi do you think is flowing through filter media when you have maybe a quarter to a half inch of head? Somewhere around 1/3 of an ounce per square inch of pressure..l. tonight I will take a few photos to illustrate part of the difficulty faced with the Tidal….

4 drops per gallon yields 2 ppm. I see noproblem with 2 ppm so long as you dont have livestock in the tank.

If you have really hard water, the stones will not affect it nearly as much as if you had really soft water… I am thankful I live in an area with exceptionally soft water…

https://www.aquariumcoop.com/products/aquarium-co-op-coarse-sponge-filter?variant=29459429195845 Now adding a fresh one in without it already being cycled will not clear your water up in 36 hours. It will take a few weeks for a bacteria colony to grow to sufficient numbers to do the job…. That is where patience comes in to play…

Definitely check the ammonia levels, I have more confidence in the liquid ammonia test kits than the test strips. If you take a cup of cloudy water in a white container does the water have a green cast to it? If so it can be the beginning of an algae bloom. The most likely culprit though is not enough filtration surface area and bacteria on that surface area. Biorings, ceramic media etc is marketted with the claim of extreme surface area which it theoretically has due to all the microscopic pores. In actual use though many people suspect the biofilm blocks off that theoretical surface area so that the effective surface area is far less. I do not use any ceramic type media as my inclination is that they are not terribly effective. I use sponges and nylon pot scrubbers as my biomedia. you might simply add a sponge filter and patience to your tank after confirming no ammonia levels and no algae bloom. Within a few weeks your heterotrophic bacteria colony on the sponge filter will clear up your water. I sometimes get cloudy water in a quarantine tank after adding quarantine meds. I have woken up to water so cloudy I thought the tank was frosted. I usually let it sit that way for another day or two after testing for ammonia and nitrites, and then put in a well cycled sponge filter in that I keep in another tank just to have a cycled sponge filter on hand. This usually greatly improves clarity within 12 hours and has the water crystal clear within 36 hours.

Well, if the water is not going through the media it is circulating and not filtering. The basket has huge bypass holes built into it where water bypasses the filter media hence the water is not getting filtered. When I plocked off those bypass holes, the water then overflowed the basket and again bypassed the media. The basket in essence is the problem with this “filter”. The coarse sponge in the bottom of the basket clogs up incredibly quickly due to minimal surface area and then flow through the sponge drops off quickly. I strongly suspect Seachem then redesigned the basket with the large bypasses to minimize the bypass float from raising up i mediately and make people think it wasnt bypassing so quickly. I tried various attempts to improve the thing to get water to flow through the filtering media before determining that the problem was more trouble than it was worth. I believe @nabokovfan87 was more persistent in pursuing a solution yet came to pretty much the same conclusion. the square upintake and the surface skimmer slots also make it inconvenient to add an intake prefilter sponge. I found I had to dissasemble the motor and impeller every week to clean that out as well as it would get loaded up with gunk. I had an Aqueon hob that also had the moror in the tank pumping water into the hob thatbI could fit a Co op prefilter onto and I removed the filter cartridges and used medium pore sponge in its place that was far less problematic than the Tidal…. But without question I much prefer the canister filter over either.

How are your phosphate levels? Are you using phosphate absorbers? When I bought and installed a canister filter I used the phosphate absorber pads that came with it and had bad green spot algae cover my anubias to the point that it killed off a lot of leaves due to it growing densely enough to smother the leaves. Removing the phosphate absorber and dosing phosphates brought it under control for me. With time new growth allowed the anubias to recover. I would caution people not to use a phosphate absorber pad without testing their water to see what their phosphate levels actually are…

Had I bought the canister filter from the get go, the cost of the Tidal would havepaid half of it… but regardless, another HOB would be superior to the Tidal. Even if the overflow button is not up an awful lot of the flow is completely bypassing the filter sponges going through that massive bypass cut out in the basket. And that water pours out into the tank largely bypassing any other media pile in the basket…. If the water is not going through the filter media, it really isnt doing much filtering… I dont think there is any reasonable solution to make the tidal work well…. I lived with it for 8 months and I should have canned it much earlier… The only mod I could forsee that might be worthwhile is removing the plastic basket and friction fitting coarse foam in its place, I have absolutely no regret in replacing mine with a fluval 207… I have dramatically improved flow throughout the entire tank that keeps injected CO2 in suspension in the waterand only service it once a month Personally I am not enamored with HOBs or Sponge filters, but truth be told every filter has its compromises and downsides…. The Tidal series doesnt have much upside in my opinion.

I solved the problem by turning my Tidal hob in to a basement dust collector and replacing it with a Canister filter. You could opt for a different solution. my personal opinion of the Tidal filter is not very high.

Pleased as punch…. With time you may notice flow decreasing. If you have had water soaking the air collar in vinegar, using a syringe to push pull vinegar through it and to clean it out helps. One member on this forum has mentioned that. I have very soft water that I supplement to get up to 3 degrees of GH, so I have never bothered with vinegar, but soaking it in strong bleach solution and using a tube brush to agitate after having soaked followed up with a soak in 1/4 cup dechlorinator in a gallon of water in addition to cleaning the tubes of visible algae noticeably improves flow. I do that maybe every three months. All in all no more work than dealing with standard uplift tubes, and even at their worse they flow better than standard uplift tubes…

If it fits, I see no problem. the plumbing adapters I buy at Home Depot are awfully cheap…

here is a link to a post showing how I made adapters. works great!

Without question Safe T Sorb will absorb all KH out of your tap water for a bit.. I used Seachem Alkalinity buffer to raise KH to 6 degrees initially and check to kh numbers daily and add more Alkalinity buffer daily for a few days until the absorption stops. As I remember it only takes a few days…Safe T Sorb also absorbs fertilizer as well early on. I dose with easy green and then test for nitrates daily and redose as needed until levels stabilize which happens within a week.. My tap water has 1 degree .kH in it. Once things stabilizes I do not supplement kh anymore and allow tank KH to drop to tap water level through water changes..

And you don’t have to go buy it either. It arrives all by itself and is incredibly hardy and forgiving…. It is almost impossible to kill….. But, I don’t like how it looks and how it attaches to my plants I spent money to get….

My point was that the addition of mechanical filtration, avoiding the detritus and decaying matter in the substrate got me where I wanted to be… It is one way that works for me.

Well, I have a non co2 injected sphere that is free of visible algae… the UGF provides copious surface area for biofiltration and the box filter and larger cories keeps the substrate from filling with detritus.

Mechanical filtration becomes an issue with UGF only. I originally tried that route on my 17 gallon fish bowl with no CO2. I was aiming for a low tech tank with no algae. Icut a ugf plate to fit bottom of sphere with one riser tube and fitted an easy flow kit to the riser with a DIY adapter. The hair and filamentous Algae felt at home in the tank. I embarked on using a turkey baster to irrigate the substrate and hoover off the resulting cloud with a siphon…. I did this twice a week for 3 weeks… I then fitted a medium Lees triple flow filter in the back that the Easu Flow air collar friction fits to. Gravel in base for weight and polyfill on top. The easy flow kit puts astonishing flow through that box filter. Polyfill was brown by evening and by weeks end it was positively filled! Continued turkey baster substrate irrigation and hoovering was showing much less muck in substrate. I had Pygmy cories in tank as I was aiming for nano fish, but they dont do much to the substrate. I ended up adding 4 enerald green cories and since then the combo of the cories and the lees filter the substrate no longer liberates brown clouds when I attempt to irrigate it with the turkey baster. I no longer regularly irrigate but I give it a few test puffs once a month to check. I now only clean the Lees filter and water change. The lee filter has significant crud in it weekly but not as much as before. I do not replace the polyfill, but simply squeeze it out under old tank water like a sponge filter and replace it. The tank is free of any visible algae of any sort. Being non co2 plant growth is very slow. My Ludwigia Repens only needs trimming every 5th week…..

The flux diffuser does have finer bubbles. I definitely have no regrets switching to inline diffuser and spray dar. Definitely keeps the bubbles in suspension much better…

It looks like it needs more light. AR is probavly the plant most responsible for me improving my plant keeping skills, and also the plant I have struggled with the most. I have had times with robust, compact, algae free,vibrant red growth suddenly become algae infested and lose 3/4 of ots leaves… It is the plant I love to hate and hate to love… I have learned to not give it an overnight seltzer soak as it, along with hornwort tends not to like that treatment. It tends to be an algae magnet, which is problematic as it tends to like really strong light too… The best way of dealing with algae with it that I have found is removing infested leaves as they do not tend to recover… https://www.2hraquarist.com/blogs/freshwater-aquarium-plants-guide/how-to-grow-ar this care guide is one of the best I have come across…

Sorry. Thought you were talking about inline atomic dufuser. Before I went with inline difuser from CO2art I tried their flux difuser. They recomended no oil in bubble counter for that as well. The Flux diffuser is supposed to make smaller bubbles than a standard diffuser so perhaps it is due to finer pores in difuser being more prone to blockage…

Well, if. Vinegar doesnt work follow up with bleach…

Given that an in.ine diffuseis typically much closer to the co2 tank and much closer to the floor and is typically used on larger tanks where you are flowing higher volumes, the oil can migrate to the ceramic element and block it up… i use in.ine diffusers from CO2art and they also reccomend not using oil inbubble counters. using water in them is not bad. I typically refill the water chambers once a month…

Looking at GLA website on the Atomic diffuser it does not appear to be a progibition on using a bubble counter but rather using any oils in your bubble counter. Ok to use with water in the bubble counter.. ”Do not use with bubble counter fluid or other bubble counter oils. Fill bubble counter with water only to avoid contamination of diffuser.” and if I was explaining it to a 2 year old, I would say, “Because Pepere says so.”

I have a few easy flow kits on adapters to use in my UGF plates. After several months I noticed flow was slowing down. I have3 degree GH and around 1 degree KH. Rather than vinegar I opted to tAke the whole assembly apart and soak it all in a strong bleach solution for a bit. Once the algae on the uplift tubes disappeared I used tube brushes and ran that through the tubes and collars, rinsed everything well and then soaked it in rinse water with a 1/4 cup of dechlorinator. Then another rinse And air dry. When I put it all together again flow was back to normal… So I can see it being either mineral deposits or algae,…