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I've never seen it fill up quite this much before. It's less than 1/4" from the top. I just tore it apart, cleaned out all the tubing, what gives?

edit: Just exploited the quick disconnect on the intake hose to fix it. Could my micron filter be full of crap already? It's only been a few days, but it's taken a lot of the murkiness out of the water that my sand introduced.

Yeah, those things clog up very fast. I took the micron filter out and still needed to rinse out the pad and media about once every 10 days or so. Call me lazy but that's just too often. I ended up giving my mag to my brother. The micron filter I would imagine would clog up in a matter of days... but that's just speculation on my part as I never did use it.

Those micron cartridges do a great job, but IME they clog pretty quick, and aren't cheap.
That's why I did the AC110 thing, so I could put the bio media back into my Magnum 250 HOT (same basic filter).


edit - but my Mag 250 is always full of water...? Isn't it normal for a 350 to be full of water?

Tom wrote: edit - but my Mag 250 is always full of water...? Isn't it normal for a 350 to be full of water?

Yes, it should be full. When performing maintenance, after putting everything back together, fill it with dechlorinated water through the intake tube until water flows of of the out take. Then shut off the 1/2 of the quick disconnect valves on the lid side of the setup, carry it to the tank, connected back up (except power), disengage the shutoff valves on all quick disconnects, and then power it up.

It will now run like it should, 100% filled with water.

If you do not fill it prior to connecting back up, allowing the siphon to reprime, the filter will not fill properly.

Instructions say to fill it halfway with water prior to startin it; I always assumed that's what the line was for. When I ran it with biomax, it stayed around there. Never filled up to the top until a few days after I started running the micron filter.

Micron filters are awful in these models. I used to run 3x HOT 250s on my old 125g and the ones I had micron filters in would clog up within 1-2 days of maintenance. I could tell when they clogged because the water pressure coming out of the outtake (going into the tank) was obviously much less than the other ones running a regular sponge sleeve around the basket with media inside.

Micron= Nothing but problems.

Had it in since I set up the tank last week and having good luck so far. Then again, I haven't let it go more than 3 days without being cleaned. Picked up another micron cart on ebay so I can swap them out and bleach them twice a month or so. It definitely helped clean up after the sand dust, as will be evident in the pics I post later.

Cleaned the micron cart today and the mag 350 operating as usual: half full. Just another little thing I have to work into my maintenance routine, and if it keeps my water looking like this, I have absolutely no problem with that.