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Canister filters in series


DubbieBoy

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Something that’s been working well for me which I thought I’d share...

Planted tanks are my particular weakness and my 200l tank had been filtered solely via an Eheim 2224 up to a few weeks ago. I had been trying to eliminate the usual yellowish caste in the water due to tannins leaching out of driftwood and the normal solution to this would be activated carbon in the filter. Because it’s a planted tank though, I didn’t want to leave carbon in there long term, I was more hoping to put it in for the few days prior to a water change and then quickly and conveniently remove and dump it. So I was on the lookout for an inline chamber that I could fill with carbon and splice into the filter outlet hose via a couple of quick release taps, something that could be quickly added or removed without having to disassemble the whole filter every time, preferably without even having to get my hands wet (because I knew that if that was required, the carbon would just sit in there for weeks at a time...). Anyway, to cut a long story short, it occurred to me that what I was looking for was best described by, well, a canister filter.

So now I have a Fluval 104 basically acting as an inline prefilter to the Eheim (output from the Fluval goes straight into the input for the Eheim and from the Eheim back to the tank). The huge advantage for me with this is that now the Eheim never really gets dirty or needs cleaning, its there purely as a bio filter. All of the mechanical filtration occurs in the Fluval, which just contains foam and floss. This means that it can be mucked out in a matter of minutes because the media doesn’t need to be cleaned out in tank water or anything, it just gets dumped and replaced with entirely fresh floss each time, easy as. All the mature bio-media stays with the Eheim. This saves a lot of time for me (and I don’t have nearly as much free time to spend on the tank as I would like) and it means the mechanical filter medium gets replaced far more often than it would if I had to strip down the Eheim every time to do it. Also, I’ve never felt that the Eheim was all that great at mechanical filtration or removing very fine particulates and that the brand-name replacement filter pads just cost silly-money that I’m not prepared to pay, but the Fluval filled entirely with cheap polyester floss does a magnificent job.

InlineFluval.jpg

The upshot, and what prompts this post, is that the water is now quite stunningly clear – the fish literally appear suspended in nothing. I’d say its on a par with a diatom filter for clarity. I have also included some Seachem Purigen in a compartment of the Fluval which is also doing sterling work. One of my greater frustrations with this hobby has been that I just haven’t had the amount of time to devote to it that I would like and that, planted tanks in particular, require. Anything that lessens the time taken up by routine maintenance is a major bonus.

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Brilliant! My setup sounds just like yours, and my frustrations have been exactly the same. I'm going to keep my eyes peeled for a second-hand fluval and do just what you've done. This definitely gets my prize for tip-of-the-week!

:bounce:

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I got my 104 new from petplanet on this forum for $80 (plus P&P). I think you'll find it hard to beat that price even 2nd hand or through TradeMe. With the new range of 5th generation Fluvals now on the market, you should be able to pick up an X04 for not-a-lot.

Just one thing to bear in mind is that canister filters are designed to operate under slight negative pressure, so its probably a good idea to approximately match the outputs and don't have a more powerful pump trying to push past a lesser pump, better the other way around. With pumps in series, the flow rate will the same but the pressure will be higher.

Good luck with it :wink:

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Both pumps running, no reason not to have the fluval running also and to not do so might overly strain the eheim I think.

Just one set of pipework in the tank (the eheim intake and spraybar sets) obviously. Good pressure and current out of the spraybar too, its positioned vertically.

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