# Media in Eheim for Shrimps



## zfarsh (Apr 7, 2011)

Hi everyone, 

I want to put a 2213 Eheim filter for my 10 gallon shimps / snails / dwarf corries. I will also an HOB filter (AC50 or AC70) which has sponge, filter floss, and bio (and i wont change this, as this is also a backup and should be fullu sustainable on its own). Also note i will have sponge prefilters (at inlet) on both the filters.

My question is, should i remove the effi mech, which is the first stage media that is a smouth finish cylinders (thus not really for biomedia), and replace this with a sponge or something else? I dont see what good this would do for me, or know the real benefit of this media, when having a sponge prefilter which does the original screening of the stuff being filtered anyways. Thus, the effi mech seems to be for larger debris as far as i can tell, but that cannot ever help as there is a sponge prefilter, thus larger solids could not be seen anyways.

I was thinking 1 - 2 sponge, filter floss, the biomedia, filter floss. Biomedia seems to be alot in there.


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## getochkn (Jul 10, 2011)

Sponges work as biomedia too, very effective biomedia, so while it won't get blocked by big debris because of the prefilter, it will work the same and colonize bacteria on it, so no need to take it or buy more media to fill it. Shrimp have such a low bioload, you are overfiltering like 1000times anyways with a canister and HOB on a small 10gal, you don't need to worry about adding any more bio-specific media.


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## Dman (May 1, 2012)

I looked into those smooth circles and found they are pretty good, they seperate the dirt from the water, when the water go threw it, I wrapped mine in the air floss so so it has somewhere to get trapped, gonna see how it works hopefully good altho i bet the small balls hold more bio matter.


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## matti2uude (Jan 10, 2009)

The effi mech causes turbulence in the water making the substrat pro work better. I read this on the eheim site before.


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## zfarsh (Apr 7, 2011)

This is the first stage media which i was talking about:

http://www.eheim.com/en_GB/products/filter-media/mechanical/mech

All i really see on their site is that it prevents larger debris from going up to the other layers... but if there is a sponge pre-filter at the inlet (to prevent shrimps and snails to get in as much, then it looks like just a waste of space, which could be best used with another media. I was thinking of cutting up a sponge into a circle and replace the eheim mech with it.

What are the other members doing with their Eheim 2213 with sponge pre-filters?

Also, note that i am using 2 filters as i do also have fish in my tank, specifically 9 aspidoras (like dwarf corries) and 3 ottos, on top of all the shrimps and snails, so it helps keep my water stable.


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## WiyRay (Jan 11, 2009)

matti2uude said:


> The effi mech causes turbulence in the water making the substrat pro work better. I read this on the eheim site before.


+ 1 
I read something like this before too.

Simply put, from the way I understood it, all the cylinders acts as little tubes to direct water flow in all directions which allows for even flow distribution throughout the canister. So instead of all the debris and such gathering into the middle of the sponge, it is spread evenly throughout.

But again, that's just my take on it.


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## pyrrolin (Jan 11, 2012)

all those filters on a 10 gallon is a whole lot of current for the little guys. Is this safe/good?


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## zfarsh (Apr 7, 2011)

@Wilray and matti2ude: 
interesting, so in essense, all the small gunk (brown stuff) that passes from the prefilter will suposetly go throughout the sponge more evenly. To be honnest, i only had that first stage in my larger Eheim 2217 in another tank for a few months, and then replaced it with 2 sponges, and i do notice a bit more gunk in the middle on the first sponge, though it does spread around after and i figure having 3 sponge vs 1 was better. As i cant remember how the gunk was spread out before i did that change, i guess the only way to know for sure is to check both way. But still, even if the gunk does spread out less using the second sponge instead of the mech, i feel i am still better off with the sponge, simply because it seems that by the time it gets to the second level sponge, it should have been spread out from the first level sponge anyways, and all the gunk on the first level has spread out anyways.

Question:
How often do you guys clean your Eheim filters? I know it depends on stocking, but i want to have a general figure for shrimps.

@ Pyrrolin: 
Current is controlable for me, so this wont be an issue in this case. For example, on the eheim, the flow will be towards the moss wall only, and the force can be controled with the discharge valve. On the AC50, i have a discharge sponde that i fitted in, and it distributes and lowers the current to a low value, so much that i even set the setting to high, so it can be set lower. I need enough flow for all the debris to be pushed to the inlet of the filter on the opposite side, so this keep my aquarium clean.


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