Hi adittam,
Would you mind sharing your cleaning procedure for the 407? I'm am coming up on my first time to clean it and am finding very varying recommendations (from don't clean anything but white/blue parts to exchange carbon etc). Would really appreciate if you could tell me your routine that works for you.
Thanks,
Cheers,
Hoembi
Sure, no problem.
After shutting the pump off and disconnecting the inlet and outlet hose assembly, I take the entire filter housing (still latched shut and full of water) down to my laundry sink, where I have clean 5 gallon bucket with about a gallon of RO/DI freshwater in it.
I then unlatch and remove the pump lid, rinsing it with tap water and setting it aside to drip-dry while I clean the rest.
I then remove both the long plastic rack out that holds the long, coarse mechanical filtration media and the media baskets that hold my mechanical filtration and chemical filtration (carbon or phosguard). However, I return the 2 media baskets that I have filled with biological filtration media (Maxspect Nano-Tech Bio-Spheres) and put them back in the old tank water that's still in the filter housing so they don't dry out.
Then I repeatedly rinse each of the mechanical filtration sponges out under tap water, spraying them and squeezing the water out of them over and over until I get all of the detritus out. As I'm satisfied each one is clean, I squeeze as much tap water out of it as I can, and then put it in the 5 gallon bucket with RO/DI water for a last rinse before putting it back where it belongs in the filter trays or racks. Once I'm done cleaning all of the sponges this way, I squeeze them under water in the RO/DI bucket a couple times and then reassemble them in the racks and trays.
I try to clean the filter about every other week, so I don't always have to change out the chemical filtration media, but if it's time to do so, then I dump the media that's been exhausted, replace it with fresh media, rinse it to get rid of any dust, and put it back in the tray.
I don't rinse the biological media at all. I don't want to lose the bacteria that I want in there.
Finally, before I put everything back together, I set the media trays with the biological media aside on the counter for a minute (minimizing the time they're not in tank water), dump the old tank water out of the filter housing and rinse it out with tap water a few times, and then give it a quick rinse with RO/DI water. Then I reassemble everything, bring it back up to the tank, hook up the inlet and outlet hose assembly, prime it until I see water coming out of the outlet instead of air bubbles, and then turn it back on.
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