I am primarily a cichlid keeper so my focus and goal has always been to maximize water turn over rates with as much biological filtering as possible. These are a few little tips I have picked up in my time.

A bag of landscaping lava rock goes a very long distance in modifying mechanical filters to handle biological waste.

Ionized vent filters from home depot are rather good water polishers. They are also easy to clean as they are mechanical only I can rise them off in the kitchen sink. Last I knew they ran me $5 ofr a whole lot of em, 20+.

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Examples:
Take an Aqua Clear power head (250 gph in my case) and a quick filter attachment.
Take apart the quick filter and get rid of the filtration sleeve. Next crush a bunch of lava rock into small marble size pieces. Load the two little cylindrical center cages with lava rock. Then take three of the ionized vent filters and wrap them around that center piece and wrap it all up in the outer shell. Place it back on the power head and let it rip. The lavarock will add boilogical filtration and the vent filters will polish your water better than the origial filter ever did, and as an added bonus you will get more water throughput even when the filters begin to clog.

In the case of my fluval 204 cannister I added crushed lava rock to the baskets to increase bio media and added a vent filter to the bottom basket to act as a water polisher after the sponges but before the bio media.

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Other simple tips don't wash or throw away sponges I have sponges in some of my fluval stuff that is nearing 6-7 years old I still rinse in a bucket of tank water and place them back in the filter.

If you use internal filters, such as the fluval 2+ or simular you can get poly pads for them which will act as water polishers and in my experience they last over two years and counting.

On my 55 Gallon I run a fluval 204, an AC 402 power head with modified quick filter, a fluval 2+, and a generic 60gph power head with diy filter attachment. This makes for over 500 gph of a combined mechanical and biological filtration.

My maintence is a 25% water change weekly. Once a month I service the fluval 204. and I alternate the rest based on what they seem to need. The water flow is optimized to keep detris off of the sand substrate so I just remove water, stir the sand to avoid anerobic pockets and refill.

Hope this helps a little.

To prevent fry from being sucked up your HOB filter place a piece of pantyhose or mosquito netting over the intake tube.

Use a flexable bottle brush to clean the uptake tubes of your filter. The brush from a gun cleaning kit also works well.

Bubble stones that have become clogged can be scraped with a butter knife under running water to clean them.

Rocks and driftwood are a good way to bring ickies into your tank.
I found a good way to clean them up.
I took a cordless drill with a wire wheel on it and sanded every surface of the rocks and driftwood taking a layer off and getting rid of any soft spots that would decay quickly and foul the water.
The next step is to soak everything in bleach water (about 1 cup per 5 gal) for about 2 hours, then I soak the stuff in clear water with dechlorinator for a day changing the rinse water about 3 times, scrubbing off all surfaces when you change water.
I then let everything dry and smell it, if it smells like bleach it gets soaked again with dechlor in the water and keep repeating until you don't smell bleach.

After looking up the information several times I decided to put it here so I could find it.:laugh:
1 litre = 0.264172051 US gallons

Gallon (GAL) Liter (LTR) 3.785

10 = 37.85 ltr
20 = 75.7
30 = 113.55
50 = 189.25

You can protect your nets from contamination by placing a Zip-lock baggy over the net end, or you can find a plastic container that the net will fit in and notch it so that the handle sticks out with the lid on.

When you go to your LFS, if it will be a while before you can get the fish home, as in long drive or errends to run, bring along some 1 gal ziplocks to put the bagged fish in.
If the temprature is extreem hot/cold take along one of those insulated lunch coolers to put them in to keep their temp stable and not stress them as much, the solid color will also give the fish a sence of security.