Air powered foam filters advice

[Surrealasm]

Hey Sam,

I've got a little experience with aquariums. Us aquarists love foam (AKA sponge) filters.

To understand why we love them so much, you need some 101 on fish-keeping. When you have fish in a tank, they produce ammonia. It's the product of their feces, gills, and various other bodily functions. When ammonia builds up, it's toxic, stinging the fishes eyes and gills, and basically poisoning them.

To eliminate the ammonia, you first have to "cycle" the tank. Basically you allow a time frame of a week to a month. In this time frame, you're actually culturing a bacteria that breaks down the ammonia and turns it into Nitrite. An additional bacteria breaks down the nitrite into nitrate.

This bacteria lives in your filter, and your substrate. What a Sponge filter does, is provide a huge "habitat" for this bacteria to colonise. What's awesome about sponge filters is that even if you loose power, the bacteria still lives and turns the ammonia into Trites and Trates.


Now, hopefull you understood that, because the sponge filter really won't do anything for your toads.

Toads don't breath water, and they pollute the water with some kind of toxins. To help maintain clean water, you'll need an actual filter with a pump. Something that can pull out larger stuff.

The sponge filter won't really do anything for your water quality at all...

Hope that helps you out some.

[Eight]

That has actually helped a lot and it's made me look at it in a logical way. Sponge is a mechanical filter, and while a normal filter contains sponge, it also contains the carbon which is more efficient with toxins.

Thank you, I best be rethinking my tank setup.