Instaling intank media basket in fluval evo 13.5

[MsBean]

So after a few weeks running my new evo 13.5 I decided to swap the stock filter for an intank media basket in chamber 1. It was a bit spendy for my liking, but I could already see the stock sponge getting gummed up and becoming annoying to keep clean. I much prefer the logic of seeing all my water flow directly onto a piece of floss that I can rinse or change readily.

A few questions for others who have done this:

With the intank flow director installed, I take it I can no longer use the fluval-provided skimmer plate. Is this a problem? Or is there a way to MacGyver it back onto there?

How have you filled the bottom two sections of the media basket, or do you leave the bottom one empty? At the moment I have stuffed in the fluval provided media (sans sponge obviously) plus some purigen and chemipure blue, but it's all a bit higgledy piggledy. Should I be arranging things in any particular way?

 

[blaxsun]

Can you post an image of your media chamber?

 

[MsBean]

I haven't had time to take a photo but basically I have filter floss on the top level, some little bags of chemipure blue and purigen crammed into the middle segment, and a small bag of bio media (the stuff that came with the aquarium) on the bottom - though it doesn't even half fill the bottom segment of the chamber.

I always heard that the order should be mechanical - chemical - biological so I was sort of aiming for that.

 

[Simon_M]

InTank have a diagram for their Chamber 1 filter. The first chamber has mechanical filtration e.g. floss. This removes the big particles and keeps the other areas relatively clean. Below that is chemical e.g. carbon or it can be bio material. Below this in the third chamber would be bio material.

I just bought one expressly to add a reasonable amount of bio material e.g. going to use Matrix. Chamber 1 has a plug supplied for chamber 2? Without it there is little or no flow into chamber 1? Also a small weir to replace the Fluval one?

The blocked off slots mean that only way for flow is down chamber 1 from top to bottom. So behaves like a conventional canister filter. I wanted the bio material to be Seechem de Nitrate e.g. in a bag in one of the compartments. I measured the flow and it is 200 lph. That's more than the recommended flow rate so I plan to switch the media to Seechem Matrix. My plan is to put the media into a media bag - I have Red Sea ones. Then to open chamber one and put something representing the tank baffle into the back so that the media bag can be put into the lowest compartment. I would use the 2nd compartment for chemical e.g. carbon and the top for floss e.g. mechanical filtration and polishing the water.