Undergravel filter?

[JWitter]

Are they worth a darn? I was considering placing one in my 29 gallon tank. I have a penguin 200 on there. Was thinking about adding the undergravel to help out

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[Coursair]

Are they worth a darn? I was considering placing one in my 29 gallon tank. I have a penguin 200 on there. Was thinking about adding the undergravel to help out

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They work, but are not recommended for planted tanks. Personally I hate the sound of the air pump.


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[DeeLee2013]

I would just add another HOB or canister, honestly. Less trauma for the fish since you would have to bury the UGF and upset a lot of particulate.

And, as was said, if you're doing live plants, then definitely not.

 

[Andy Sager]

UG filters had their place in the hobby a while back but truthfully, they can be a pain as the detritus collects under the plate(s) and needs to be periodically removed or your nitrate level will skyrocket( even with water changes.) For some time, people were using reverse flow UGs by forcing water to go down the tubes so that the detritus in the gravel bed would push upwards to be collected by the outside filter. This proved to be more unnecessary expense as the proper HOB or canister will negate the need for the UG. So longer story short, I wouldn't bother with the UG. Get a bigger HOB or use some form of sponge filter or canister filter as your filtering system if your current filter is too small for your tank.

Hope this helps.

 

[JWitter]

Thanks for the input folks, think I will just upgrade my hob, my canister filter is for a 100 g tank, but I'm not sure I have all the parts. I do have two spare pennplax cascade 300 hob filters for up to 100g tanks. I guess I will try that out. I thought that penguin 200 would suffice for a 29g but I guess I was wrong.

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