OK I'm gonna remove my UGF

[rumblesushi]

yep, that sounds like a pro UGF

I just have a standard UGF with a powerhead that pumps about 12x the tank volume per hour.

Btw in regards to the gravel vacuuming or putting gravel in the filter. I thought about gravel in the filter then thought it might screw up the impeller.

And when I set my most recent tank up, I simply put some gravel from the established tank, a rock, and gravel vac'd some water onto a sponge filter after the power filter was already set up.

The tank was pretty much cycled right away.

 

[guppy]

Oddball that sounds great and I will try that, as I have said elsewhere I use both ugf and external filters at the same time. As for efficiency, well a well established ugf is probably not quite as good as a good power filter but it is close and I have always found them to be fairly low maintainence, They are also cheap and easy to custom build.