Thanks Mike - I will quote that to the lfs today, apart from the fact that it's my petrol money going back to return the fish plus I had to go back again last week because they overcharged me on my card! How much does it cost in reality to feed up a sick fish for them? I am a new customer who might have spent a small fortune in the future and they totally missold me so why should I take the cost?! When I say I will quote you btw I don't mean you personally!!!
Thanks for your message Kurt - I think there might be some confusion, what I meant originally was that I wasn't going to find it very easy to change the service kit (filter) every fortnight. The water changes are a different matter - I will be reading Mike's article on that in due course when I am ready to do the maintenance. Of course sponges need rinsing but you don't change them fortnightly, just rinse them surely? Mine is a non-sponge filter, the resins will not clog up like a sponge would so I can't see why fortnightly would be so necessary IMO. Actually it is newer technology and not just an under-gravel type filtration. It's perfectly fine, I appreciate all opinions it's just that I hear this one all the time! If I had experienced problems like I did when I had tropicals (with sponge filtration) then I would tend to agree with you but so far there have been no imbalances bar one slight glitch and I would say that shows the tank is healthy. I found the 'old school' filtration in my tropical tank never worked, but there were probably other factors going on at the time and of course tropicals are a different ball game. That said, my experience (and that of numerous others including professional setups) has been all good with the biorb so far so why would I want to ditch it and spend a small fortune on a massive setup I can't house?! I'm not blowing off the opinions, merely asking the basis on which they were said, and responding to that. To be honest the proof is surely in the pudding - my tank is healthy so I expect that it has been the right decision for me at the moment. If a complicated setup was feasible I would probably have done it but it isn't. I'm sure your tank is a hundred times more interesting than mine but this works for me so unless anything starts to go wrong I will be sticking with it.