I am not sure how to word this but I will try. To me all of the power filters, canisters, UGF's operate only on the oxygen in the water, except the one with the bioconverter wheels (and they are another story), and there is not enough oxygen in the water to properly provide bio conversion. That is not quite right, I mean here that the oxygen used in conversion removes some oxygen that could be used to increase your fish load and more material must be used to perform the bioconversion than if more oxygen was readily available, if you follow my drift and I am somewhat drifty here But water does only have so much oxygen available and that limits what we can do.
I prefer the words bio converter to bio filters as the biofilter does not really filter anything, it does convert different forms of nitrogen to one the the fish can live with unless it gets too high through the lack of water changes (nitrate). Thus most filters are really oxygen starved. That is why marine folks use wet and dry filtration, the bioconverter is covered with water and removes the ammonia and nitrite from the water and then the water is removed and oxygen is supplied to the bioconverter material. One filter, the Eheim Professional Wet and Dry, does provide good oxygen flow to the converter. It is too expensive for me.
And plants solve nothing, in that during the day they give off oxygen to the tank and you need to add carbon dioxide for the plant as it needs carbon dioxide while it gives off oxygen. BUT at night the plants take in more oxygen than given off during the day. So actually they take oxygen from the aquarium and the fish there in over a 24 hour period. There is now a power filter that also provides wet and dry circulation to the bio converter, it is the Tetra and with it you have the opportunity to fit the Tetra Capsule heater in to this filter. They claim it does away with many heater problems and hot and cold areas, but it seems to me that the water at the output of the filter would be warmer than the parts of the tank some distance from the filter, but you would not have fish who do not like the heater intruding into the tank and fight with it until it breaks. I actually had this happen. Nothing bad happened to the tank but it did lose the heater and the water was getting on the cool side when I discovered it.
So maybe that is a good idea to place the heater inside the power filter. I just don't like the noise of the power filters. I use Emperor 400's, a Marineland H.O.T. tank canister and UGF in another tank. The UGF has been the best of all filters as far as not losing fish in that tank, but it requires a constant vacuuming and it has other problems also. So I have removed it and am cleaning my 90 gal tank which is temporarily out of service. I am thinking of adding a canister, the FilStar XP3 to the 90 gallon tank, it is the right price at the moment, less than $100 at one catalog place and it seems to be everything one would want in a canister.
My question is to stop the removal of oxygen from the water by the ceramic rings bio converter section, would it be possible by using an air pump to insert the out put into the filter uptake adding oxygen to the water and ceramic rings OR would the cause an air block or lock in the canister and stop its operation, possibly burning up the pump motor also?
Any ideas??
Caudelfin
I prefer the words bio converter to bio filters as the biofilter does not really filter anything, it does convert different forms of nitrogen to one the the fish can live with unless it gets too high through the lack of water changes (nitrate). Thus most filters are really oxygen starved. That is why marine folks use wet and dry filtration, the bioconverter is covered with water and removes the ammonia and nitrite from the water and then the water is removed and oxygen is supplied to the bioconverter material. One filter, the Eheim Professional Wet and Dry, does provide good oxygen flow to the converter. It is too expensive for me.
And plants solve nothing, in that during the day they give off oxygen to the tank and you need to add carbon dioxide for the plant as it needs carbon dioxide while it gives off oxygen. BUT at night the plants take in more oxygen than given off during the day. So actually they take oxygen from the aquarium and the fish there in over a 24 hour period. There is now a power filter that also provides wet and dry circulation to the bio converter, it is the Tetra and with it you have the opportunity to fit the Tetra Capsule heater in to this filter. They claim it does away with many heater problems and hot and cold areas, but it seems to me that the water at the output of the filter would be warmer than the parts of the tank some distance from the filter, but you would not have fish who do not like the heater intruding into the tank and fight with it until it breaks. I actually had this happen. Nothing bad happened to the tank but it did lose the heater and the water was getting on the cool side when I discovered it.
So maybe that is a good idea to place the heater inside the power filter. I just don't like the noise of the power filters. I use Emperor 400's, a Marineland H.O.T. tank canister and UGF in another tank. The UGF has been the best of all filters as far as not losing fish in that tank, but it requires a constant vacuuming and it has other problems also. So I have removed it and am cleaning my 90 gal tank which is temporarily out of service. I am thinking of adding a canister, the FilStar XP3 to the 90 gallon tank, it is the right price at the moment, less than $100 at one catalog place and it seems to be everything one would want in a canister.
My question is to stop the removal of oxygen from the water by the ceramic rings bio converter section, would it be possible by using an air pump to insert the out put into the filter uptake adding oxygen to the water and ceramic rings OR would the cause an air block or lock in the canister and stop its operation, possibly burning up the pump motor also?
Any ideas??
Caudelfin