ACO sponge filter and clear water

[PaleoShrimp]

I have a 55 gallon tank with two medium ACO sponge filters. It looks like there’s always little bits of fish waste, plant parts, whatever that are making the water murky. Does anyone have any suggestions for trying to polish the water better with just the sponge filters. I’m careful not to over feed the tank. I’m thinking about trying to make taller lift tubes for the sponges and have an elbow at the top to direct flow, but I don’t know if that will be enough to get better water clarity. 

[Galabar]

Maybe power heads for the sponge filters? Also, a Sicce Shark ADV 400 with filter floss would go a long way to polishing the water.

 

[DaveO]

You will need to add a hob or canister filter to polish the water. The aco sponge filters are too porous to do that. I had the exact same setup in my 40b, two medium sponge filters, and the more time goes by the more debris in the water. I took out one of the two sponges and installed  a canister (fluval 207) which cleared up the water nicely. 

[TOtrees]

On 6/26/2023 at 6:03 AM, DaveO said:

The aco sponge filters are too porous to do that.

Agree with @DaveO.

Sponge porosity choice represents a treade-off between water cleaning and maintenance frequency. Finer sponge (less open or higher ppi) will capture more debris, but they need cleaning more often. The more porous (low ppi) sponge of the ACO filters means they will run without maintenance virtually forever, but that comes at the expense of water clarity/polishing.

A good indicator or signal of this is how much mulm/detritus/debris/poop comes out of the sponge when you clean it; most of my tanks run Hydro Pro sponge filters, and when they get cleaned/rinsed, a ton of debris gets removed and rinsed out. But when I clean the ACO sponges in a similar setup with a similar run time/maintenance interval, they remove almost no physical debris from the tank. Is your experience with ACO sponges the same @Plecoecho?

I don't think that a canister or hob are your only choices, but I do agree they'll do the best/fastest job clearing your water up. If you want to stay with air, you could get a more traditional high ppi sponge filter, but be prepared to clean it more often (and when you do make sure you use a bag or container to capture the sponge before you lift it out of the tank, to avoid rinsing all the gunk back into the tank before you can remove it). Personally, I like the Hydro Pro sponges, I find they strike a great balance between capturing debris for removal, and maintaining flow/water movement. But I gather there is a mfr/supply issue with that brand right now :(

[PaleoShrimp]

Hi everyone,

Thanks for all your input. Life has been a bit hectic and I haven’t been able to get back to this. @TOtrees I usually get quite a bit out of the sponge when I clean it, but we’re talking months worth of filtering and I have nothing to compare with. 

I think for me, if it’s a breeding tank or experimenting tank I’ll just do sponges, but if it’s a display tank where multiple people will see it, I’ll have something extra. Of course then you run into the age old question of which HOB or canister. I like the idea of polishing the water more but haven’t found an HOB that ticks all the boxes for me and canisters can be expensive. 

[nabokovfan87]

Alright so there's a few things going on here but let's break down the slightly technical side of things.

Mechanical filtration is entirely about removing the particles in the water through some sort of device. For the most part sponge filters are 99.999999% mechanical filtration in my view.  They do support biological life, but they can entirely be used to simply polish off the water.  Because the flow of water isn't as optimal as something like a HoB the turnover on that filter is much less.  What you end up with is this slowed version of mechanical filtration.

Now, when you think about the different types of mechanical filtration there is "extra coarse" foams, coarse foams, medium foams, fine foams, and then you have very fine pads.  There is matala mats, polyfil, membranes, and even pleated paper filters you can use for the mechanical side of things.  In the entire gamut of filtration the sponge works in a pretty specific way.

First, the largest chunks of debris are stuck on the outside layer of the filter foams.  Sometimes these particles (like plant debris) don't get sucked into the pores of the foam, sometimes they do.  For those particles that do get sucked into the pores of the foam, you have the effect where the pores are constantly shrinking and the particles can filter out smaller and smaller debris over time.  Depending on the pore size on the foams initially then you're going to see different performance out of that filter.  The older hikari sponges did a great job, but cleaning the debris wasn't always the easiest.  I don't know that there is an easy sponge to really clean out if the sponge is too thick or acts a bit like velcro and grabs all of the muck without letting it go.... unless you're using a higher pressure setup like a hose.

Hopefully that helps.  Ultimately, you can rubberband or tie on a piece of polyfil on your filter for "fine pad" style of filtration in a pinch or you could have a HoB you use once a month or something to polish the water and just toss the cartridge when you need. You can run one fine sponge and one course sponge too.  There's a lot of ways to handle it, so hopefully you find something that works for you!

On 7/11/2023 at 9:31 PM, Plecoecho said:

I like the idea of polishing the water more but haven’t found an HOB that ticks all the boxes for me and canisters can be expensive. 

For just polishing... Aqueon quietflow works very well.

There is also a marineland polishing filter which has a pleated reusable filter you can get. 

[TOtrees]

On 7/12/2023 at 1:21 AM, nabokovfan87 said:

For the most part sponge filters are 99.999999% mechanical filtration in my view. 

@nabokovfan87 I have to disagree, respectfully and with a smile. 🙂 Imagine a bare bottom tank with sponge filtration only. Higher bioload, so a robust "cycle" is in place. A lot of us keep tanks like this as breeders or grow-outs. If you remove the sponge(s) and replace it with airstones only (so same water movement but no filtration), that tank will be at a high risk of problems/crashing, due to the literal physical removal of the bb that resided in the sponge. 

<submit>... boom... discuss... 😛

Edited July 12, 2023 by TOtrees

[Tommy Vercetti]

The cheap (Amazon) sponge filters are much finer porosity and can polish the water quickly but they clog just as quickly. I keep some of these and use them (when my water needs polishing) in addition to the ACO sponge filter that stays in the tank. This works much very well and can usually get the water crystal clear in 2 days.

[Goosedub]

You can also just keep doing what you are doing and use a water clarifier. I accidentally bought some instead of water conditioner and it works. It has the small particles clump together and often sink to the bottom where you can siphon them if desired.

[Maximus]

Keep the sponge filters going and don't clean them as often. Sounds counterintuitive, but the buildup of mulm/debris on the course sponge causes finer and finer particles to get picked up. I run two mediums (with one nano pump so not much filtration really), I overfeed and under clean probably, and my water column itself is usually quite clear (the substrate is another story). I've thought about rubberbanding a finer sponge pad around part of the course ones, but so far seems like more trouble than it's worth.

Do you have any pictures of the placement of the filters and the water clearness?

[nabokovfan87]

On 7/12/2023 at 7:18 AM, TOtrees said:

If you remove the sponge(s) and replace it with airstones only (so same water movement but no filtration), that tank will be at a high risk of problems/crashing, due to the literal physical removal of the bb that resided in the sponge. 

<submit>... boom... discuss... 😛

To be fair.... Depending on the sponge itself and how it works, I've never not had stability issues in a sponge only setup. As a result I run 2-3x more than recommended for my tanks. I size the filters to the tank (not the stocking) and just about every single tank is a largest size when possible.

Keep in mind that there's 2-3 "designs" for the foam themselves. The older designs would commonly have only a height change but the diameter of the sponge was similar. As the sponge itself is thicker, you have the inner diameter of the sponge, closest to the air movement, where you have the bacteria taking a bit of a hold. On my current setup with the newer sponges, the majority of the bacteria I see is on the air diffuser, air stone, and the uplift tube sections themselves.

Let me see if I can find a photo to make this make some sense....

Hikari versions (sponge is the same, but cut to length based on tank height)

Other versions where sometimes the sponge is a certain length, but the diameter does change as well.

So.....

This simply means that depending on the design, performance is very, very different. Not all filters are created equal. Not all sponge filters are created equal! Some "shell" a lot more and others are very much designed for that mechanical side of the filtration equation as opposed to anything else.

If you're running a sponge filter only setup, using something like lava rock as hardscape gives you a bit more biological stability too.

[nabokovfan87]

On 7/12/2023 at 8:49 AM, Maximus said:

Do you have any pictures of the placement of the filters and the water clearness?

Here's mine. If it helps at all. The "nano one" is removed because I added on a HoB breeder box yesterday. Note how "dirty" the sand is visually due to feeding and lack of circulation compared to other filtration methods.

[Maximus]

Sorry, I was referring to @Plecoecho

[Peaceful Fish]

Cheap way to polish the water is add a  cheap $15-20 HOB stuffed with polyfil. Keep the sponge filters for biological filtration. 
 

I run two sponges and one of these in my 55 gallon. 

https://www.amazon.com/Tetra-78002-Whisper-Gallon-Filter/dp/B01NB1GCQY/ref=sr_1_2?crid=3M95SUZ0CLN7I&keywords=whisper+iq30&qid=1689214726&sprefix=Whisper+iq30%2Caps%2C119&sr=8-2