Juwel lighting units

Sponge Replacement

The Juwel system requires little, but regular maintenance. We suggest that you put aside about 30 minutes every four to six weeks. This will give you the opportunity to trim the plants and rearrange the rocks if required. To make maintenance easier it helps if you take out 20 - 25% of the water. This can be done with a Tetra hydroclean gravel washer which will also remove any waste on the gravel surface. With a small sponge wipe over the inside of the glass to remove any build up of algae.

White Pre-Filter Pad

This is one of the most important parts of the filter system as it acts as a pre-filter removing excess food and plant particles thus protecting the rest of the filter from clogging. We recommend this pad be changed on a weekly basis.

Black Carbon Sponge

This part of the filter provides us with our chemical filtration removing impurities from the water and leaving that crystal clear effect. Activated carbon has a relatively short life because of the job that it does and after six weeks it needs to be replaced. Please note when using any chemical treatment in the tank you will need to remove this sponge for the treatment period.

Upper Blue Sponges Coarse

In the upper part of the filter you will find two coarse sponges. These act as our mechanical filter removing any larger particles that have found their way into the filter. The top sponge should be cleaned at six weeks when you change the carbon sponge. For the bottom sponge, repeat the above program at twelve weeks.

Lower Blue Sponge Fine

filter maintenance The filtration system has a bypass valve between the two layers of blue sponges. This removes part of the water which is then recirculated to the aquarium. This allows a slower flow of water through the lower sponges providing a stable biological filter. If you look after the upper section of the filter as described above the maintenance of this lower section should be as follows;

The top sponge should be cleaned at six months. This should the be repeated at twelve months for the bottom sponge. Please note: All Juwel Combination Aquariums have two sponges in thelower section whereas the Rekord range of aquariums has only one.

In the past it has been recommended to clean sponges in water from the aquarium to avoid loss of bacteria. However we have found this to be very inefficient and consequently we only clean one part of the filter at a time and have found no problems in cleaning the sponges under a tap.

Tetra Bactozym should be used after cleaning or changing of filter media or after using a treatment which may have reduced filter bacteria numbers. Use normal tap water to fill the aquarium up adding a dechlorinator such as Tetra Aqua-Safe. This will remove any unwanted chlorine from the water and also provide essential vitamins to the aquarium.