Under gravel filter?

[Rocksor]

Why under stock the tank with a bunch of small fish im not really passionate about or care for? I’d rather have a minimum sized tank with a juvenile fish for it and have to do extra work than have a bunch of small fish i could care less for. Just me though.

looking for minimum sized tank and thinking of water changes as work is already the wrong mind set to be successful in this hobby, especially when dealing with fish that grow past 4”

water changes is a way of life for fishkeepers just like walking a dog

 

[Rtc/tsn]

looking for minimum sized tank and thinking of water changes as work is already the wrong mind set to be successful in this hobby, especially when dealing with fish that grow past 4”

water changes is a way of life for fishkeepers just like walking a dog

Not looking for the bare minimums in the hobby but at the moment that’s all I’m able to provide

 

[skjl47]

What all do I need to run one?

Hello; I run mine on air bubbles. A big advantage of the UGF is the air bubblers and the flow in a tank. I have tried various setups over 5+ decades. Early on the UGF was a mainstay. Later on I started to use the HOB (Hang on back) type filters. HOB's run by air and later run by various forms of electric motors and magnets. It seemed like it took maybe 15 years for the HOB's to get to the point of being reliable in terms of not losing siphon and running for a long time.
I went thru a period of maybe 15 to 20 years of not using an UGF at all. I still had to vac the gravel and found lots of detritus in the gravel.

About 10 + years ago I joined this site and began to see the negative posts about the UGF. I still had some in boxes so did set up some tanks with a UGF to see if I had somehow missed something in the four decades prior. I found they still worked just fine as they had for decades. They were not so often the tanksaver now days as they were back a few years when the HOB's and other filter systems were not so reliable.

I have UGF in two tanks right now. I also run decent HOB's on the same tanks. Do not let anyone kid you about it. There will still be fish poo in the gravel which you will have to vac out no matter what filter you use.

The UGF is a tool and like any tool needs to be used with an understanding of it's limitations. The UGF does not trap and remove detritus from the tank, so understanding this is a key.

An irony I found on this site was how so many were having the same sort of effect when using an HBO or other external filter as they panned the UGF about. That practice being that they were not replacing the filter media on a regular basis. They were "gently shaking" the media in a bucket of old tank water and putting the dirty media back into an external filter. Sure some of the detritus was shaken off but most was still in the media. I replace the filtering part of my media with new every so often. We need to discuss the beneficial bacteria (bb) if some respond in a negative way about this.

So use an UGF if you wish or not, either way can work.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

There is another option that is as effective but which requires less maintenance. Look into the Hamburg Mattenfilter. Here is a link to some excellent information on them but it is also a site that sells aquarium type stuff. It is not your usual site however. The owner is a PhD cancer research and lifelong fish keeper. He is also a regular speaker at fish events and you will find him in the vendor room of larger weekend events.

Here are 3 links, I suggest you read them in order:
http://www.swisstropicals.com/library/aquarium-biofiltration/
http://www.swisstropicals.com/library/mattenfilter/

Q: how often do you clean/rinse a Hamburg Mattenfilters or Cornerfilters?

A: only when needed; as long as the water goes through, just leave it alone! The longer it runs, the better it works. Mattenfilter are mimicking soil biofiltration. There are Mattenfilters in continuous operation for over 10 years! This is a low maintenance filter media, and the larger the surface area, the longer it runs without clogging. In tanks with very heavy loads, and for smaller corner filters, you can rinse it more often if needed (quarterly, biannual, or so). However, be careful not to crash the tank by cleaning the filter sheet too thoroughly.

My first tank had a UGF converted to an RUGF and removed for good when I discovered baby panda corys and swordtails under the plate. Today I have three tanks with Poret foam Mattenfilters. I have one canister filled with the same foam only plus 19 permanent and 14 temporary Poret cubefilters. I also have replaced many of the sponges in my AquaClear power filters with the Poret. Poret is not cheap. But aside from being a superior filter media, it reduces the amount of time one spend cleaning meadia/filters because it needs cleaning much more infrequently than any other media I have used. The Poret filled canister went almost 4 years before I cleaned it the first time.

There are other brands of rigid foams available. I choose to use the Poret and never even looked elsewhere. But I am biased because I got a lot of good advice from Dr. Tanner and we had some very lively exchanges regarding the the ammonia oxifizing Archaea v.s. Bacteria.

 

[fishdance]

A deep gravel bed is extremely hard to beat for biological and mechanical filtration. While living in Japan I met many monster fish keepers using submerged beds in their sumps.

Also popular in Japan is using sponge sheets under gravel to create undergravel filtration. So the best of both worlds perhaps.

 

[dogofwar]

I'm also a big fan of Poret - it's really amazing stuff and I use it as sponge filters, as walls (basically the whole wall of a tank is Poret) with jet-lifters, in sumps and even as dividers. It's hard to beat the bio capacity and ease of maintenance.

I like the coarse Poret the most as it tends not to get plugged, even over time. Maintenance of Poret is me periodically agitating it in the tank and siphoning the gunk that comes out. I also keep a box filter - with a lot of air running through it - behind my Poret walls to provide some flow and suck up gunk.

Most of my tanks have a very thin layer of pool filter sand as substrate (basically to cover the bottom to cut glare and to provide something for fish to dig). The only use I have for UGF filter plates today is as part of DIY sump and dump filters.

There is another option that is as effective but which requires less maintenance. Look into the Hamburg Mattenfilter. Here is a link to some excellent information on them but it is also a site that sells aquarium type stuff. It is not your usual site however. The owner is a PhD cancer research and lifelong fish keeper. He is also a regular speaker at fish events and you will find him in the vendor room of larger weekend events.

Here are 3 links, I suggest you read them in order:
http://www.swisstropicals.com/library/aquarium-biofiltration/
http://www.swisstropicals.com/library/mattenfilter/



My first tank had a UGF converted to an RUGF and removed for good when I discovered baby panda corys and swordtails under the plate. Today I have three tanks with Poret foam Mattenfilters. I have one canister filled with the same foam only plus 19 permanent and 14 temporary Poret cubefilters. I also have replaced many of the sponges in my AquaClear power filters with the Poret. Poret is not cheap. But aside from being a superior filter media, it reduces the amount of time one spend cleaning meadia/filters because it needs cleaning much more infrequently than any other media I have used. The Poret filled canister went almost 4 years before I cleaned it the first time.

There are other brands of rigid foams available. I choose to use the Poret and never even looked elsewhere. But I am biased because I got a lot of good advice from Dr. Tanner and we had some very lively exchanges regarding the the ammonia oxifizing Archaea v.s. Bacteria.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

I use mostly the 20 ppi foam for filtration. I also use it as a tank divider. I use the 10 ppi for f[pre-filters and recentl got a huge sheet to divide a 50 or 40b, I use another 10 ppi shred to divide a 125 gal. I use a couple of hte 30 ppi cubes for small tanks or for fry. I do admit that I spent between 30 and 45 seconds during weekly maint. by running a siphon hose across the front side of Mattenfilters. I also spend about the same amount of time siphoning out the silt which collects behind the foam. I have run Mattens both with air and with a pump.

I even have one tank for breeding plecos which has a 2 inch thick Mattern on each end of the tank instead of a single 3 inch thick foam. One Matten has the return air powered and over the top of the foam which is the traditional method. What I did with the other foam was to cut a hole in the lower front portion of the foam and then jury rigged a powerhead output tube to a small 160 gph variable speed pump, This blows the water across the lower portion of that tank towards the Matten at the opposite end. This gives me some current across the cave mouths and creates a circular flow pattern in the tank. The water gets blown across the surface left to right while the other pumps water across the bottom from right to left. This setup has been running for years (I am thinking about 5) and I have not yet needed to clean either of these Mattens.

One of the major draws of the Matten was it reduces the time I needed to spend on tanks as they need cleaning so rarely. Plus they work better than any other filtration I have used. The actually promote denitrification when well established.

 

[jjohnwm]

UG filters were vastly overrated back in the day when everyone used them, and they're vastly underrated today now that they are an old idea with apparently no "sex appeal" at all. They always worked the same way, i.e. pretty well. Reversed UG were even better, but I don't recall any commercially-available RUG filters that seemed practical. Most RUG filters were a DIY project, at least for me.

Honestly, since discovering the use of foam/sponge filtration many years ago, I have completely abandoned UG filters. Buy an appropriately-sized Poret center-drilled cartridge, buy or make your own airlift and you are in business.

 

[duanes]

Since all filtration basically does the same thing, by sucking detritus into the media to get it out of the water column, and into the media where aerobes convert ammonia and nitrite to nitrate, its kind of a horse a piece.
An UG filter pulls detritus into the substrate, same as a canister pulls it into the media in the can, or HOB pulls it into the box, and nitrate is spewed back into the tank.
The only real mitigation factor is how often the media is cleaned.
If you clean one more often than the other, that's the only essential difference.
The Under gravel filter collects detritus in the substrate, and if the substrates regularly cleaned by vacuuming it may be better than a infrequently cleaned canister.
I started fish keeping about the time the UG (then called the "miracle filter") was new, and becoming popuar, so I used it for many years.
I now use Porrett foam in my sumps, but calling it better is a stretch, I use convenience as my judgement of what's a better tool.
If I clean one more than the other, because its easier to do maintenance on, that's better.
To clean an UG filter properly, the substrate must be frequently vacuumed, to keep it from becoming a nitrate "sink", and in some way that frequent vacuuming may be better because it forces one to do water changes, the only convenient way to control nitrate.

 

[fishdance]

A deep bed undergravel filter is an enormous amount of media. Many times more volume and mass than multiple canister filters.

Poret sponge if used properly creates denitrification so more complex than simple nitrosomas and nitribacter.

Each and all different filtration methods have their own aspects to provide us flexibility and advantages.

I've got a couple of canister filters well prefiltered so not much dirt enters. Only cleaned when the outflow starts to reduce. I haven't needed to clean them for at least 9 years. Mechanical problems seem to occur when canisters are cleaned.