Slacking on a filters cleaning means that you don't clean it every week. Eheims are somewhat overkill for this means. It is easy to slack on certain things, and often (that being at least 90% of the planted tanks I have seen) the filter is not cleaned but once a month, IF that often. For a planted tank it is necessary to clean the filter every week if you want to keep phosphates low. A high end filter will be overkill for this purpose. I run a fluval 404 and an eheim 2026 on my 135, and between the two I think the eheim is a better filter. However, for the money I would have rather put a catalina CA-1000 on the tank instead. The filter is not the place to spend all the money when it comes to a planted tank, in fact the opposite is true, I would skimp on the filter more than anything. Many tanks I have seen lately have been without filters all together. The plants and the surface area of the rocks, wood, and substrate are enough for the bacteria, and the plants take care of the rest. IF someone wanted to use an eheim, a classic model will do much better than a pro 2 model. The classics are much cheaper, and more bang for the buck.
Spyder said:
When I recommend a filter I never imagine that a person would slack on maintanance. If you want a heavily planted tank, most likely you will care for your filter properly. Slackers can never handle a heavily planted high teck tank.
When I recommend a filter, I base this on pure experience. You may not imagine that people will slack on maintenance, but most will.
Heavily planted tank keepers are also not a sign of harder workers, it is very easy to place several plants in a tank and let them go, and have a very dense tank of plants. That doesn't mean that any work was put into the maintenance of the tank at all. I have a good friend that has a very heavily planted tank, however he is a BIG slacker. He doesn't do water changes, and has terrible water quality. He doesn't fertilize hardly ever, and he never gravel vacs, nor cleans his 2026. His fish are dying, and his plants are growing. However his plants are not thriving, and he has algae blooms every week at least once, and has the worst black beard algae I have seen. This is due mostly to the phosphate levels. If you have the money to spend you can get all the gadgets, and all the plants you want, but that doesn't make you a hard worker.
but I run my Eheims for more than half a year without cleaning, and my plants grow just fine ... always have.