How to Change a Canister Filter – Marineland C-160

Hello Readers !

I have been wanting to do a video on how I change my aquarium filter’s Canister  system for a while now. I finally did one  this past week and am pretty proud of how it turned out.

I take you through the steps and provide a few tips here and there that really work for my set up and should would work for most user’s setups.

I use a Marineland C-160 (160 stands for 160 Gallons per hour – serious filtering for a 20 gallon tall).

I  have had no real issues with this product and it has performed from day one.

My Marineland Canister  has some modifications to the contents of each tray which I will describe here:

Firstly in the Carbon Basket stage, I opted out of using Marineland brand pre-packaged filters and decided to make up my own. Allow a little messy (I wear gloves when rinsing the carbon)

Using the Marineland Bulk Carbon with cheaper reusable Large Seapora 12 inch bags saves money in the long run.

Secondly,

I swapped out the Biomedia (Marinelands Bioballs) after reading quite a bit about filtration media and how it actually works in nature and other aquarium setups. As it turns out, I’m sure Marineland’s extra ceramic product which is found already in its higher end models would have been  fine for the job however  I decided to go with Eheim’s Substrate Pro Media for my Biological Filter stage.

This media retained a pebble like shape (easier to manipulate in the Tray) but was porous enough and contained enough surface media for bacteria to grow. Since I’ve switched to the Eheim product, I noticed a substantial filtration capacity increase and virtually no ammonia  or nitrite spikes in over  1 1/2  years since I put them in. My tank is also currently heavily populated and I’ve still had little issues.

One problem in the video of which you will see is that my fish tank was suffering from a  bacterial bloom. Changing the  water was the first step, the second is changing the canister as it was close to the time anyways.

In my next video I will demo the Green Killing Machine which actually solved this cloudy issue. Watch this video and then stay tuned for the next.

Happy Aquarium keeping !