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I've got a 6'2'2 tank with the following water:

PH 7.8
GH 8 (i.e water soft but PH high)
KH 5
Nitrate 5 or lower
Nitrite 0

I'm doing 30% water changes a week split into 2 with 50-50 ro-water.

My main question is i've got about 6 plecs in the tank inc 1 zebra and a large peice of bogwood. Twice a week before the day the water change is done I feed them on cucumber the other days a mix of brine shrimp, tetra prima sinking pellets. All food is eaten and all but the cucumber is gone within 10 minutes or less. But! i'm getting huge ammounts of waste in the filter I think it's mainly bits of bogwood and I saw another post somewhere saying about using bogwood causes the filters to get dirty quick if you have plecs that like grasing on it but with both water changes I do a substrate clean.

Still with one Eheim 2080 and one Eheim 2028 running the filters get dirty very quickly I used to clean the filters monthly when I had stingrays because of the large waste production but changed to every 2 months when I changed to plecs and the stingray went to another home. I get lots more waste with the plecs then I ever did with the stingray the sand always looks covered in minute peices of bogwood od something even though it's cleaned regularily and the filters get dirsty very quickly say within 2 weeks.

Is this normall with plecs and bogwood and is this mess just peices of bogwood or do plecs go to the toilet alot.

Any advice wood be good all plecs are happy but i'm concirned how quickly the filters are getting dirty with so few fish?

OH I was thinking of cutting down the water changes to 30% every 2 weeks instaed of every week, what do you think?

It would be interesting to know what other plecs you have, since some are worse than others. Imo, the wood eaters are the worst.

As a general rule though, plecs crap a lot lol! I have a couple of Panaques, wood eaters, and they crap like crazy, but it's perfectly normal. Wood in itself is not a terribly nutritious meal, hence they have to graze constantly and that pretty much means they crap constantly too.

call it a side-effect of keeping plecs lo..but in answer to your question, yes it's perfectly normal.

You can cut down the water changes to 30% as long as the water quality doesn't deteriorate to detremental levels. It depends on the size of your tank, the filtration and the stocking levels..so each tank in that respect works differently. Try 30% but test your water more regularly until your sure your tank can work with those levels of water changes.

Have you tried placing a pre-filter sponge on the filter intake?

I was thinking of a prefilter sponge, eheim used to supply one with there older filters I think it was the wet and dry one but replacements are costly any other manufacture do cheaper ones that will fit i'm in uk.

OH I recently chucked in the Carbon for some Seachem Purigen seems good so far.

What are people use as dechlorinators, I've always used Waterlife Haloex and have tried Seachem Prime in the past but was informed by seachem that the hole tank needs to be dosed if you add the water change water to the tank before dosing. With the Waterlife product only the percentage done needs to be done even if added to the tank.

BUt only yesterday I noticed that Haloex uses formaldehyde in there product as a a stabaliser they claim so i'm still indisisive whether to change even though I've just bought a Trade Haloex og 500ml which will probably last about 4 years doing 2 *20 gallon water changes a week.

I have a Mag drive pump, which came with a pre-filter sponge, which I don't use. I found that it PERFECTLY fits the filter intake of the Eheim. In fact, purchased more of the pre-filter sponges and used them on all my intakes. The sponge has an opening in one side only and the hole in the pre-filter is actualy shaped like a V, which is how the filter intakes are shaped.

Hi,

Think this topic should probably be in general fish chat as not really to do with zebs, but I'm not sure?

Conditioner: I use Prime which is the best available IMO. I'd probably stick with the haloex though given you have it already, although just because the manufacturer claims you only need to add the amount appropriate to the amount of water changed doesn't make it true It doesn't mean the products work differently Seachem's approach may just be more cautious/accurate/inclined to make you use more product...

Bogwood: The different types do also vary in how much they crumble away- some if you take out of the tank to clean will just flake and crumble under running water whereas others don't seem to degrade at all even when scrubbed.

Prefilters: The cheapest way is to make your own custom ones from sponge. Cut it up with scissors, put it in a plastic bag full of water and freeze it, then drill an appropriately sized hole with any type of drill bit you have and let it defrost. If you can't be bothered, PM me as I have loads, although it's very easy to do (they will be a bit ragged if you cut them with scissors, I use a foam cutter).