Removed Under Gravel Filter

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i removed mine very carefully with the fish still in the tank, i kept the python sucking away as i very slowly took out all 4 grates, took almost an hour keeping the water clear, then i did a water change, took out enough water so that the fish had a small amount of room to swim.
 
I say, Good for you! I used to have one years ago, I wasn't impressed. What size tank do you have?
 
I removed it already..I just been hearing a lot of complaints and the tank seems to be doing better with out it..My Ammo dropped a lot since taking it out..I dont know if that was a fluke or not..Its a 45 gal tank and I have a Whisper 60 power filter still.
 
Get a Fluval 304 on there and you can get rid of the Whisper 60.
 
What are your most recent water test results? If your ammonia has dropped since taking it out, that would mean that the tank isn't cycled. How long has the tank been setup?
 
its been set up for 3 months...ammo is 2.0 now...i did have a major problem with getting it to cycle..after numerous water changes things are starting to go to norm parameters...
 
You should do a water change asap to bring down that ammonia, as a level that high will be very stressful for your fish. If you can get your hands on some BioSpira, it would probably help you complete your cycle pretty fast. I've never used it myself, but I've heard a lot of people have had good results with it. It's pricey, but if you're tired of cycling you may want to check it out. 3 months seems like a really long time for your tank to not cycle, have you been cleaning out your filter or changing media out of it? Or maybe rinsing your media in tap water? Your fishies will thank you if you don't clean your filter or replace any media until your tank cycles. :D
 
I used Bio Spira to cycle my 90 gal FW tank and was very impressed with the results. I love this product. You do have to add fish at the same time as the Bio Spira. I used platies and danios and never lost a single fish and never had an ammonia spike. I now have a new home for my cycling fish, if I can catch them!
 
madchild24 said:
i added ugf to my 40 gallon it works great. but its a $100 ugf

You would have been much better off spending that money on a canister filter, and a UV too if you had the money left over. UGFs just cause waste to build-up until it becomes dangerous to the fish. Plus you have these big tubes and lots of noise in your tank. Bad idea.
 
There are some people that are fans of ugf and then theres people that don't care for them that much. I'm not a fan of them, but if it works out for you, great!
 
After about 6 yrs with a Powerhead powered UGF reverse flow... I yanked it out a couple of months ago and changed to fluorite all to convert over to live plants... I haven't looked back since. UGF is a pain when you try to grow plants that need substrate depth to develop roots.... the reverse flow would just shoot my stem plants out.

To be fair... for my plastic plants setup, the UGF faired very well and I was religious with gravel vacs and I even tried to suck out whatever I can from underneath the plate through one of those pluggable holes. I had a Penguin filte for mechanical filatration.
 
The biggest problem I had when I removed my UGF on a 10 gallon was the massive poo storm it stirred up. It took me many vacuuming sessions to get the gravel clean after it settled.
 
I quit using ugf's about 2 years into the hobby.. I had a 48 gallon octagon.. an old design.. I could not find a ugf to fit it.. so I used a nice sized HOB filter and the tank cycled just fine.. then came the fish.. I put one huge african cichlid in the tank... she was killing all of her tankmates in the other tanks she was in.. the HOB handled the bio load of the tank just fine... after that I found that with any other filter the ugf was just not necessary.
 
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