AC 110 with an undergravel filter run by powerheads works great for me. I would not choose another set up than this.
AC fans vs. all others
- Thread starter sushiray
- Start date
spaulding;3877049; said:
I packed the reuseable cartage full of substrate pro, put it in the slot closest to the spillway, drilled some holes in the side of the box and put a long airstone in there and packed the rest full of polyfill. It worked great, crispy clear water, paramaters were stable and I didnt have to buy anything other than an occasional 3 dollar bag of polyfill. The other benifit of the bio wheel thing is, if you want to start another tank you just take one of the established wheels from an old filter and pop it into a new emp and your good to go. But the AC cant be beat as far as GPH....so if you have really messy fish and turnover is a pretty big concern then AC is ftw, if you have a tank that is not so messy and you dont want uber flow but really good bio than a moded out emp is a great filter imo.
Err;3877151; said:
You could do the same thing with bio-rings from an AC, switch to a new tank. In fact I have two 110s with two bags of rings so I can do this when needed. The sponges,as long as you clean them regularly last a long time and replacements are like two bucks on kensfish.com. I have had trouble with my Emperor 400s starting up again. But you are correct about adding the the airstone, couldn't do that to an AC.
except that adding an airstone does absolutely nothing for your HOB.
the bubbles do not provide any oxygen to your BB, and there are not enough bubbles to create a wet/dry effect. so basically youre just adding another useless visual aid to the HOB.
the bubbles do not provide any oxygen to your BB, and there are not enough bubbles to create a wet/dry effect. so basically youre just adding another useless visual aid to the HOB.
i like them a lot and fave a few mixed in with the piles of "fish stuff" but i nolonger use hob on any of my tanks... i run sumps and canisters on everything... ive got over 500gallons in the livingroom of my house which is slightly less than 900sf... ive got enough "running water noise" to last a lifetime so the last think i want is another waterfall...
wait i take that back.. there are two ac70s on the 30gallon brackish tank..
wait i take that back.. there are two ac70s on the 30gallon brackish tank..
ok, I posted another thread asking for pros & cons of filters.
http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=307515
http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=307515
bitteraspects;3880250; said:
So how much air exactly would you need to run over the media in order to provide "any" O2 content to your BB? Give me a defined rate of air flow vs water volume and water flow needed to provide an adequate rise in O2 levels within the filter in order to have an effect on bacterial growth within the chambers of an Emp 400 filled with substrate pro. I will help you out and tell you that those calculations are astro-freakin-nomical.
1) you dont know how much air I was pumping into that thing! 8L/min total.
2) you dont know what the water chemistry looked like
3) what basis do you have to say that you cant create a wet/dry in an HOB?
I dont have any proof, however I just took a wild guess that 4L/min pumped into each chamber would in fact have some effect on O2 levels in the water surrounding the ceramic media in the filter given the volume of air and lower PH of the water, not to mention the contact time of the air with the media itself. I further guessed based on some of the experiments that were conducted in my microbiology class that even a minute increase in O2 concentration should have a profound impact on the bacteria colony growing in the filter not only in size but species diversity as well and as far as I can tell it worked great, I had 2 adult Oscars in a 75g with a syno cat and I never had any NH3/4 or NO2 show up, that lone emp 400 kept the water crispy~!
LD50;3883177; said:
well said.
the only reason bubble wands provide any oxygen at all to your tank is because of the surface agitation, however, being that your filter is already plenty agitated, the bubbles are not providing anything further.
