Habitat - Indoor :: 2000 gallon pond filter for $45?

[ellman605]

sup yall, me, being a petsmart fanatic, was searching the clearance, and found this

http://www.petsmart.com/global/product_ ... 7434257462

any idea if that would work for a 50 gallon tank? :P

[Vivi]

wouldnt the filter be too strong for a 50 gallon tank?? i would be scared because the turtle can get sucked into the filter. and the petsmart thing says for large volumes of water and i dont think a 50 gallon tank has alot of water in it. In IMO I would get another tank or find another filter.

[turtlerugby]

with that type of filter yu will need a pump I believe and you would alleviate the problem of the turtles getting sucked up. But depending n the size of pump you get they can get very expensive. You can get one that does around 500 gph for around $50 if my memory serves correct

[ellman605]

lol, i've never understood the pumps, these filters get to complicated...:S

[robm]

I have a similar pond filter and it works great. It works even much better than I ever imagined. The aquarium holds about 80 gallons.

You must not use a big 100+Watts pump ofcourse, just connect it to a canister filter.

Before I had this filter I was using an Eheim 2213 canister filter (one of the smaller canister filters, only 8W pump).
The problem was with cleaning the filter. You can't clean the entire filter at once because the beneficial bacteria will then be removed which results in cloudy water. Week 1 I cleaned the top half of the filter, week 2 the bottom half. Since the turtle makes such a mess it was sometimes necessary to clean the entire filter which resulted in cloudy water occasionally.
So, I had to get a bigger filter. After reading a lot about filtration and bacteria I thought it was a good idea to get a pond filter.
Since the filter is so big I am sure that I never need another one. Another advantage is that you can just buy another pump when you need more water to flow through the filter (bigger aquarium/pond, more turtles), no need to mess with the filter. Since the pond filter is connected to the canister filter no junk is getting into the pond filter.
Bacteria always remain in the pond filter so there is no problem in cleaning out the entire canister filter, I don't have to be careful with the canister filter anymore to preserve the bacteria.

I have not seen any bacteria bloom (cloudy water) in years. In the beginning I cleaned the pond filter after a few months and then (because it was not dirty) after about 8 months, then after 1.5 years and now I know that I won't open it for years. There is no real dirt in the filter, just some slimy stuff that probably are the bacteria. It looks very different from the junk inside the canister filter.
Note that there is about as much slimy stuff after 2 months as after 1.5 years, it does not seem to increase.

I never expected the pond filter to work so well with only a relative tiny amount of water (= not much oxygen for the bacteria to break down the dirt) flowing through it. The Eheim filter pumps only 100 gallons per hour but it is enough.

In the Eheim filter there are only two sponges/foam parts (coarse and fine). It is easy to rinse these, much less work than cleaning the porous rock pieces that I used in the Eheim filter before I had the pond filter.

I have stopped measuring water quality since right before a water change the ammonium and nitrite levels are too low to be measured and the nitrate level is minimal.

Note that the filter in the the first post is not meant to be under pressure. That means you can't put the aquarium on a table and the filter below the table. I tried it, but the lid of the filter broke after a couple of months due to the pressure. I had already reinforced the lid but it did not help. There are pond filters that can be pressurized.
The size of the filter and the fact that it can't be hidden below the table are probably the only downsides of the pond filter.
I am really happy with the water quality and the amount of work it saves (just clean it once every couple of years, this is ofcourse only true for the pond filter, not for the canister filter) and it costed about as much as a big canister filter.

[steve]

I have never had a problem with cloudy water for more than a couple of hours but I do complete water changes and thoroughly clean out the filter media. I do take my ceramic rings out and let them sit in a container with tank water, though I am probably leaving them in there too long.

Since it's getting much warmer, I'm expecting to do more frequent partial changes so I'm not too concerned about the bio-media right now

Thanks for the interesting post!

[zuse]

I don't quite understand all the filter/pump stuff. So... the cannister filters have the pump and filter built in? So when you buy the pond filter that doesn't have the pump you can hook it to the cannister filter which has a smaller pump for smaller aquariums? What is it about filters that changes what size they're intended for? I know for turtles you want something that cleans a tank 3x as big as the one it's really used for... but that has to do with how much water is pumped through hour, right? I just don't get it. I've tried reading all the articles, old posts on this site, and searched online but I just can't figure out what's what with all this filter/pump stuff. It's like a different language with all the terminology.

[steve]

There are different kinds of pond filters. http://www.bestfish.com/pondfltr.html

I believe most people will use an in-line filter or an external filter. External canisters have media baskets that you can use to further customize the type of filtration you need (extra mechanical, extra bio, etc.)

The ratings that filters used are based on their own company's copy. Instead of GPH, it's easier to read what it's rated for and multiply by 2 or 3 (unless someone wants to do real math ).