Cleaning canister filter

How often do you clean your canisters?

once a month. sometimes skipping a cpl weeks. on my big tank its one every 2 weeks (two canisters)

Every three weeks.

Once every couple of months. I have so many plants in both of my canister-filtered tanks that the water params stay at (or near) zero so there's little motivation to clean unless flow drops.

I just bought a fluval 306 for my 55 gallon tank and thinking of cleaning the filter every 3 weeks. what about the water change do you guys do it till you clean you're canister?

i just dont do large water changes within a week of cleaning the canisters out. its all biomedia tho so i could probably get away with water changes well before that.

I try to clean my canisters once a month, but I was reading of people going months or as long as a year before cleaning!

I usually don't clean mine on water change day either.

What? Your supposed to clean those things?

I am way over filtered and I do quite a few small extra gravel vac midweek so I dont clean filters out too often. I have two FX5's on my 210g and I clean one out every 3 months, wait a month and then clean the other. They are not even that dirty when I clean them.

I have two filters on most of my tanks, but they still get pretty dirty. I'm also heavily stocked in most of them and vacuum only once a week.

I had one canister that went almost three months without a cleaning and when I did it yesterday, it took me much longer to get the sponges clean. The thought of the tank water running through that nasty stuff for weeks and weeks -- yuck.