I just bought a 2nd hand Eheim and wondered how to approach the problem of setting it up. I am currently running a Resun (useless piece of something unpleasant that sticks to your shoe) and needs replacing and intended to use most of the bacteria charged media where I can.

How do I treat (clean) the Eheim as far as avoiding the possible introdction of parasites and disease .... or am I being paranoid. :-? I know alot of people who got out of fish and sold off all there gear because of nasties in the tank killing their fish and they had enough!

That's a good question. I just bought a 2nd hand eheim too, but I also bought the tank and all the fish so I just set it up and got it running again when I got home.

I suppose the only sure way to sterilise it would be to throw away all the old media and chemically sterilise the cannister with (in order of harshness) chlorine bleach or potassium permanganate or a strong salt bath. Then you would have to run the filter to get your sterilising agent through all the hoses and whatnot followed by repeatedly flushing it with fresh water to remove the sterilising agent.

The media in one of those filters is very expensive - I'm guessing the reason you're asking is because you want to sterilise the media as well as the hose and cannister? I can't think of a way to do that safely because the media would absorb the sterilising agent and release it into your tank over quite some time. I would think it would be almost impossible to rinse the media clean - those ceramic O's have huge surface area and I'm quite sure you'd never get bleach out of them once it got in.

Hmm... you've got me thinking now... I hope someone else has bright ideas in case I decide to sterilise my filter.

i guess you could boil the media in water ? also sterilise with salt water solution ??

Ahh yes boiling .... a good idea. The sound of salt to clean the other bits is probably the best if it works well as then I don't have to worry about flushing killer chemicals out of everything!

Cheers and thanks for your help!

Washing things and puting them in the sun works for smallpox so it should be OK for fish diseases.

Washing things and puting them in the sun works for smallpox so it should be OK for fish diseases.

:lol: Good point. Next time I have smallpox I'll remember this hint. :lol:

Although I'd be reluctant to leave the plastic cannister out in the sun in case it got damaged. And also you'd have to get the UV light into every corner to sterilise it thoroughly.

I'm thinking salt through the cannister and boiling the hard media (and replacing the soft stuff) sounds like the plan.

It's not UV that you're particularly wanting when you're leaving it in the sun. It's getting it dry. Drying is far more deadly to most diseases than the stray bit of UV they'll get from leaving in the sun.

Of course, sun burning the little Swearing removed.. Mod a bit doesn't hurt either.

I would boil the media and rinse the filter parts with a paste of salt, then rinse of with clean water and dry in the sun. I used salt and sun to clean tanks when breeding or quaranteening fish without any problems.

Thanks everyone for the advice. I boiled the media for 10 minutes no salt added then microwaved it to partly dry it, followed by placing it in a couple of trays and putting in the sun to dry totally. Then washed the parts in a saturation point salt solution where it stopped disolving in hot water. I let it cool and added the plastics and sponges. I will buy some benificial bacteria culture and soak the media (fill the canister) in a solution of that when putting it together to use, figuring the dry media will suck up the bacteria better than wet. I think I've used a bit of all the ideas and thanks for everyones 50 cents worth! Cheers

No trubs---the invoice is in the mail.

Thanks everyone for the advice. I boiled the media for 10 minutes no salt added then microwaved it to partly dry it, followed by placing it in a couple of trays and putting in the sun to dry totally. Then washed the parts in a saturation point salt solution where it stopped disolving in hot water. I let it cool and added the plastics and sponges. I will buy some benificial bacteria culture and soak the media (fill the canister) in a solution of that when putting it together to use, figuring the dry media will suck up the bacteria better than wet. I think I've used a bit of all the ideas and thanks for everyones 50 cents worth! Cheers

Sounds like you've done a very thorough job! Well done to have the patience to do all that work. Much better to do it now than try to fix a problem after it's happened.

The only thing I seem to have inherited with my new tank is snails. That's fine with me because I'm going to have clown loaches in it and they think snails are the perfect pre-packaged TV dinner.

happy to help 8)