Underground filters are the best Come at me bro

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
What happens when your tanks are with are reef or plant based? You can't use UGF. Now what tough guy.
 
What happens when your tanks are with are reef or plant based? You can't use UGF. Now what tough guy.
Why can't he?....and someone already explained how to use UGF in a plant tank.
 
Never used a UGF on a planted tank but just the mess of the earth being sucked into this thing would cause a collapse.
- if not properly maintained, can cause buildup of bad stuff in gravel
- not good with fish who dig
- export of waste is much harder
- no separation of mech and bio filtration
 
My Crinums outgrew the tank (3+ft long leaves in a 24" tall tank) in a UGF equipped tank full of predators and substrate movers. The plants root bundles spread out over a foot wide throughout the bonded padding I had between the UG plates and gravel.

And, before protein skimmers, we used the same UG and bonded floss setup in SW tanks with crushed coral. Not many SW keepers used fine sand back in the day. The UGF provided additional bio-filtration and the mulm was cleaned out using electric vacuums so the SW could be recycled back into the tank.
 
......and there you have it.
 
I still use UGFs in my tanks that have species that can be a problem with plant moving. Once firmly anchored, even the oscars get bored with trying to move the plants.
It sure beats the old way of keeping plant movers and plants together. We used to have to set up a false rear glass panel 4-6" from the rear of the tank. Plants were planted behind the pane and fish lived in front of the pane. Offset elbow siphon tubes kept the front-back water levels adjusted to the filter outflow. This method kept the plants lush and the plant 'chamber' acted like a refugium filter for processing fish wastes.
 
I'm sure they worked and still work fine,but for myself where all my tanks are sand based i would definitely have problems. The sump or canister is the way to go for myself.
 
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