Tidal filter question

[svachon9]

When I turn off my Tidal 110 and start it back up it spews out terrible water.  So do I have to empty the out of all the water and medium, every time I turn off the filter or am I doing something wrong?

[reefhugger]

You can try lifting out the media inside the filter and giving it a gentle rinse to remove the debris it's filtered out of the tank.  There is  good bacteria in the media you'll want to maintain so a gentle rinse to  remove the free debris is good.  If there is debris in the tank hold, a turkey baster is ideal for pulling it out.  

[TOtrees]

Just because the water has debris detritus mulm gunk or whatever you want to call it, doesn't mean it's terrible water. I presume it's a temporary issue, and it clears up relatively quickly. 

Question: why are your turning your filter off, if not to clean it out? Could your turn the flow down all the way, instead of turning it off? Then, when you turn the flow back up, it might still release some gunk, but would likely be much less.

In terms of what's happening, I would suspect that under normal operation, the flow of water up through the media basket is physically trapping gunk against whatever media you have, but it's like swishing a flat net to pick up debris. As soon as the flow stops, there's nothing trapping the particles against the media and they dislodge. When flow resumes, they're loose or free, and they pass through all at once. As normal operation resumes, all that gunk reattaches (because flow is again trapping/pressing it against the media), and the tank clears. 

Question 2: you are rinsing/cleaning out your media occasionally, right? Filters and filter media need regular maintenance. The frequency depends on many factors (what's in your tank, how much you feed, what kind of substrate, human behavior/tolerances, etc), but if you never clean out your media, well there's a big part of your problem. 🙂

In addition to rinsing your media /media basket as @reefhugger suggests, you could also add a layer of filter floss to your media basket, that you discard occasionally. 

[quikv6]

I am assuming you are turning it off during a water change. Perhaps you turn it back on too soon, before the water level is up to the skimmer. If so, that terrible noise will be the filter trying to pull in water (but just sucking in air) from the skimmer.

[KaitieG]

I've had this same issue with my 110 and know exactly what you're talking about.  At first it didn't happen for me and then got worse and worse over time.  More mulm and gunk shooting out of the filter after I would turn it on from cleaning it. Super frustrating when I'd just changed the water and cleaned the tank. I'd rinse the sponges and other media and the media basket, so it wasn't coming from there.  I figured it out last week.  The answer is that yes, you have to clean out the reservoir on the filter itself.  Not necessarily every time you rinse the media, but periodically.  There is a shocking amount of mulm and gunk that builds up in the housing of the filter itself.  At least I was shocked!  

It's a pain to take the whole filter off the tank, and I think the turkey baster idea would accomplish a lot of the same thing so long as you do it pretty regularly.  A turkey baster wouldn't have handled mine!  It could at least extend the time between the unhooking the whole filter thing.  But cleaning the filter box itself out didn't turn out to be that bad of a job once I knew to do it.

[Guppysnail]

@KaitieG I don’t use tidals but my Marineland do this also.  I use my python or I have a short 1 inch hose to vacuum the HOBs when I clean media.  A turkey baster would not handle mine either.