I think this will make a great topic on newbies looking for the right filter for there tank.

Canisters are my choice of filters as ive never seen a tank get cleaner so fast. There east to hook up and cut down on water changes.

Good points: Exellent filtration and easy to hook up fluidized bed filters to.

Bad points: Not to easy to clean and takes abit of time to pull it apart and put back togeather as some of the canisters have 5 levels of sponge's in them.

I have used the old fashoned floss box type and would NOT reccomend them, they are a pain in the but, they have to be totally dismantled for cleaning and the amount of charcoal that you are supposed to use is never enough to keep the darn thing on the bottom, plus they are ugly.

I have also used HOB filters which were pretty good, you can rinse the cartridges and rebuild them several times before the floss bag wears out. You can also put the cheap plastic pot scrubbers behind them to catch large debris and give more surface area for bacteria colonization. You can also remove the charcoal from the floss bag and put other things in it to condition your water.

Depends on the situation really.

I like cannisters for thier biological capacity when one can't do a wet dry sump.

However cannisters usually need help with polishing which hobs seem to excel at.

I would venture to say I like a mix.

Sadly HOB's aren't available over here in the UK so for me it is always cannisters. I normally keep a few sponge filters running on the big tanks as emergency "cycled" filters for hospital tanks or quarantining.

I like HOB filters. Canisters can overflow if not sealed right and can spill water ALL OVER the place X_x

Aquaclear is my favorite.

i love aquacleer they are my top choice
i had a canister filter once but it exploded (literally) and got water allover the couch and hardwood floors and persian rugs and what other things
and worst of all the whole house smelt like fish for almost 2 months (fabreze was no match, whatsoever, at all)
i always put plastic scruber under my big foam thing for more bacteria and finer waste catching
i also usually add a bag of amonia crystals on top of the carbon
personally i wouldent go with anything else
these are very much fine for all my aquariums and i can even try my hand at making a biowheel for my big aquacleer
il actually go do that now and post a pic when im done =) :lol: :drunk: :laugh: :guns: :wub: :spam:

My two internal canister filters in my 55 gallon keep the tank really clear. It's incredible! They're very safe for fish (not fry, so much... but my bristlenose fry do well)... I find them a bit of a bugger to clean. 'Guck' seems to get caught behind the filter, and all comes out when you move it. Also, I find the suction caps are really crappy on them, and most of the time they end up sitting on the bottom of the tank. I've had the impeller break on one of them, but they're easy and cheap to replace!

My home made trickle filter on my 80 gallon seems to be as good as trickle filters are supposed to be. :woo: The only problems are things I could fix... Checkvalve (I don't go to irrigation shops often!) and it's hard for me to open (but not my boyfriend :laugh: ). The only thing that bugs me is fish getting into the overflow... It's such a pain to get in and get them out.

Jebo 338 filter, built into hood with the light... Only issue is once the foam clogged up, and the water spilt over the back. The instructions for it were non-existant, so it took a lot of mucking around to work out how we really should go... The intake bit also broke, but I can order in that part if I wanted to... Instead I just did a quick job. It does a good job when it's going, and seems to keep the water flowing around really well. It's easy to access and clean.

Another homemade filter in the pond... Water is sucked through mechanical filtration, through biomaterial (waste plastic off cuts). All submerged, unlike the trickle... It's cycled a huge amount of ammonia in the pond (ammonia was released from some ornaments), so it must work! :woo: Plus, I have plants to suck out ammonia, too. :) Downside: It was really hard to weigh down, and I had to remove biomaterial in order to put a weight in to weigh it down... Not the greatest design in the world, but for a first try I'm happy for it. Oh, and CHEAP. $16 for the foam, $10 for LOTS of the biomedia (more than the filter can hold), $0.48 bucket, <$5 in piping and pipe fittings and then the pump for $65 (which I had lying around).

wow, this thread really took off! great work guys

i personaly use penguin bio-wheel 350, HOB it seems to work great!i have never had them fail YET, but they seem to work really well, i would like to try an aquaclear, and see how they preform.


i would never use an UGF in my aquarium again, it was when i was first starting out, what can I say.......LOL

it is a cess pool waiting to happen, and by god thats what i had too...LOL.


Tyler

I myself use Tetra brand external filters.. i use two of them per aquarium, one for biological filtration and the other for atificial filtration, the Bio-one gets changed every 6 months, and the replacement cartridge is the one from the artifical onne one week after the last time i changed its cartridge.. and the artifical one gets changed every 3 months...
SINCE this might seem confusing heres an example

:both filters added
artifical changed
artifical changed
artifical changed and one week later changed again while putting the old one in the bio filter...
and etc etc etc..

good points: no re-cycling process
Really clean water
twice the fitration
and all that jazz
Bad points: takes more work
more expensive
too much water movement for some species of fish

The things i would not reccomend is cascade external filters or internal filters of any brand
cascade has a small slit on the bottom and non of the waste is gone.. it just slides underneath and internal filters do keep a tank clean and stuff.. but gets too mucky,

The best filtration is a wet/dry aka sump.

I will never run a tank again without one.

These are only necessary on large tanks with a lot of fish though as they handle the bio load extremely well.

There would be no point putting one on a 20g.

i love my DIY wet/dry sump. also have a few cannisters, power filters, and a sponge filter kicking around at the moment. like Steve said, they(wet/drys) are great bio filters. they also do a good job with oxygenating the water as well as help stabilize your tank even further by adding to the volume of water. plus i like being able to hide my heaters down there out of the main tank. if you have a big enough sump you can also use it as an isolation tank for fry.

There is nothing wrong with stringing a bunch of 20 gallons to a wet/dry sump though.

Would work nicely for breeding different julies and shellies as they like teh same hard water.

For sure...all systems should be like that.