Quality air powered filters of almost any kind are great in my opinion. Can't go wrong when you can run 15 large sponge filters on one 8-16 watt Jehmco air pump. Can't beat it if you're not looking for "show tank" conditions. But in terms of practicality? Good stuff.
Yea sponge filters are an eyesore that's why I chose to go with the corner filter,
I switched over all my tanks, two 265s, two 220s and a 75 to dual corner mattens. When I made the switch, I put the media bags from the FX5's behind the sponges so I didn't have to go through a cycle. I also help out several friends setting up new tanks with cycled media. I have a heavy stock of fish in the 265's, mainly the plecos and the sponges handle it fine.
Thats awesome to here, thinking about putting 2 on my 55 now since my canister blew up and flooded the bottom of my stand
I switched to hmf on my 180g because I woke up one morning to a leaky ac110 dumping water on my floor, plus I wanted to experiment. I am doing bare bottom on my tank so I will say that a lot less of stuff gets sucked through the filter versus before I had 3 ac110s running. They were much better at keeping dirty suspended, and then sucking it into the mechanical filtration. If I had gravel/sand I would not notice this though. Also, the primary reason of the hmf is bacterial filtration and not mechanical. If you want mechanical you will always need to go high flow.
