If you change he blue cartiage in a fish tank will it destroy some of the bacteria?

Question

Also when you are cleaning your fish tank you rinse the blue cartiage sometime, so do you have to rinse the black one to that you don't replace?

Answer 1

What kind of filter do you have??  It you have a filter that has different mediums like the Aquaclear.  What you do is only change one medium at a time.  If you rinse the sponge or filter make sure you are rinsing it in some aquarium water you took out of the tank.  Do not rinse filters under tap water that is not a good idea.  

You do not want to change your whole filter all at once because yes you can kill off a lot of the good bacteria.  I change one part at a time every month or 2 months.

Added:

To the person about Bacteria town USA.  It is kind of like that.  But yes there is bacteria in the rocks and around the tank.  BUT it is not as much as Bacteria town USA that lives in the filter.  So if you destroy all of Bacteria town then your tank will have to run off of the little third world towns and that does not do a good job they don't have the power.

Answer 2

Anything you remove from the tank will remove beneficial bacteria, but the fact is the filters need cleaned and replaced.

If your tank is established this won't make a difference in the tank.  Just like vacing the gravel to remove waste.  Once a tank is established, ittakes little time for the colonies of beneficial bacteria to reestablish.  Yes rinse the black one as well.

Answer 3

I know some people warn about losing bacteria when you clean a filter, but I wonder about this.

I would think there would be plenty of bacteria floating around in the water anyway, even if there are most in the filter.

It's not like they all migrate to the filter and build little houses in Bacteria Town USA and stay there! :)