Aquis 2400 Re-fresh

[ILLUSN]

Hi Everyone, excellent forum, following Proteus's review on the aquis 2400 last year I got myself one at a steal and have been relitivly happy (except for the huge amount of bypass) with it on my 330L (4x2x1.5) planted community tank. It's been a year and i'm upgrading to a new bigger tank (670L 6x2x2) and want to freshen up the media. at the moment i have
lowest basket (1) eheim and aquaone ceramic noodles and blue sponge
next basket (2) eheim and aquaone ceramic noodles and black sponge
next basket (3) aquaone substrate (?lava rock?)+ Ehfisubstrat + white wool
top basket (4) Ehfisubstrat +a bag of crushed coral (buffer Ph with CO2) + white wool.

filter gets cleaned every 2 weeks with aquarium water. I've noticed the flow rate to have degraded over the past few months i assume due to clogging of the top 2 baskets. Any recomedations? I was thinking of replacing basket 3 with eheim substrat pro (have 4L left over still sealed ) and basket 4 with JBL micromec (and white wool), do I have to keep some of the old substrate to "seed" the new media or will the ceramic rings and old course sponges do that for me? I will be using the filter to cycle the new tank for at least 3 months while the plants get established before i add any fish.

[ILLUSN]

After moving on my 2 big plecs Jaja and Binks I unplugged this filter and forgot to plug it back in. the other day when i wanted to use my quarentine tank again i relised the stupid mistake I made and thought before I plug it back in I better check it out so i pulled off the filter head.

IT STUNK OF MUD AND DEAD FISH!!!!!!!!!!

my filter media had died and gone completely anerobic.

not to get too disapointed I figured this was the best time to giving this thing re freesh as i've wanted to since January.

the media was washed aboput 15-16 times to dilute the smell then it had to be sterilized. It was transfered to my wifes very expensive new cooking pots (tank you uncle whoever from the wedding present :P )
and boiled for 20minutes.

Next the substrate was boiled in the same way, you would not believe the ammount of brown scum that came out of this stuff

[ILLUSN]

While this was boiling I went to the bathroom to give the canister, baskets and hoses a good clean.

The hoses were ok, a quick once over with the hose brush and they were done, the canister and baskets stunk and were first scrubbed back to pristine white, then soaked in a 20% bleach solution for 10 minutes.

After this they were washed a good 7-8 times with clean water and the canister filled with water with a 10x dose of prime. this was left for another 10 minutes then emptied and repeated twice more.

After that was done there was only the faintest smell of bleach left and it was time to re- assemble.

During re assembly i found the reason for the MASSIVE ammount of bypass I had, the baskets were WAY TOO FULL!

As alot (35-40%) of the media was now crushed and too small to use (kept falling through the baskets) after a good 2 years of heavy use I added some fresh media and filled the baskets to the correct height.

[ILLUSN]

The real question is was all this was the effort? Did i really clean it up enough to use the filter and media again?

the 2400 was put back together and put back on the quarentine tank a 4x18"x16" (120cmx60cmx40cm tall) with a seasoned 2217.

the quarentine fish were added a pair of turks, male brilliant blue and female red from BT gunner.

1 week later i think the results speak for themselves :D