been long term comparing under gravel to non under gravel filters...

[Magnum Man]

the curmudgeon in me wants to find the under gravel filtered tanks, more stable, but in side by side comparisons with both tank styles having mechanical filtration ( I mostly use hang on back ), I'm really not seeing a difference in tank function and stability between tanks with under gravel plates, and tanks with no under gravel plates... I find having rooted terrestrial plants in the tank, more stabilizing, that the various filter types... I also have several tanks with only sponge filters, and am not seeing any practical differences in the various filter styles... seems they all do what is needed to maintain quality water long term, provided "normal" water changes are performed

what has been your experience???

 

[GaryE]

I'm experimenting with home made undergravels. Just because the hobby ditched them doesn't mean they aren't good. I used to be able to breed difficult fish with UG filters in the tanks, including good sized Satanoperca.

I can't provide readings as data to back what I'm doing up, because I don't use test kits. Yes, I could if I wanted serious testing, but I'm dabbling with these filters. I see the UGs working very well. But I generally water change a lot. Right now, with wildfires around and a drought, I'm voluntarily reducing water use to keep the reservoirs topped up in case of need. So my filtration is even more essential. I'm going to every second week/14 day water change intervals.

Because I have no hang on the back flow, and I don't have extra canisters, I use these filters to run shallow tanks to breed fish that won't breed at depth. So a 10 gallon will run with 5 gallons max and these filters. They have held in well for that function.

I also made a large UG for a 40 gallon, with a powerhead, and it is also good. I have bubblenests from Microctenopoma in that tank, so the water's good.

Any serious experiment would involve water testing and controls, and I'm not into that degree of detail. I'll leave that to others.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

My very first tank was over filtered because I had a UGF and an Emperor 400 with bio-wheels on a 45 gal. tank. The one thing I got right was the depth and size of the gravel I used for the UGF. Then I learned about RUGFs and I changed over to doing things that way. I went from using air power to using a reverse flow powerhead to run the RUGF.

Imo, an RUGF is the way to go. But to get the best results we should also have a hamg-on whose job is to remove the solids from the water. Because of the reverse flow, as debris starts to sink towards the substrate, the reverse flow keeps particles from being sucked into the gravel and instead keeps them suspended in the water for the most part. A hang-on loaded prinarily for "mechancal" filtration removes a lot of that. Without the secondary filtration the water witht he solids will be sucked into the intake and wind up in the substrtae as the water is pushed up through the gravel.

The down side to any form of UGF is that the 3 inches of gravel reduces the water volume in a tank as well as the open area that would normally exist without all the UGF gravel. However, there is no better bio-filtration possible as the amount of microoganisms that can colonize the gravel is much more than any other form of fiilter with the exception, maybe, of a Mattenfilter with a high quality foam such as Poret.

When I discovered live swordtail and panda cory fry under the RUGF plate, that was the end of my RUGF days.

 

[Magnum Man]

I only ever did a reverse flow, on a salt water fish tank, and no mechanical filter, which you need, to remove the waste, in mine, it floated around, so it was a short experiment, that would have had a better outcome, with some sort of mechanical filtration

 

[fishorama]

I wish I had tried RUGF back in our UGF days, But now I have too many plant roots to clog the plates. I mostly use HOBs but have some canister filters I'd like to use again.

 

[GaryE]

It's funny how the timing of threads people post can be dead on. Yesterday, I bought four perfectly intact used 1970s-80s powerheads, and a brown, ancient Aquaclear 70 (then 1200). This is aquarium museum stuff, but so am I. It was cheap and the kid selling it had his heart in the right place. He'd overpaid for them in a garage sale. They'd been boxed up in a barn for decades after the death of the garage sale family's father, who must have been a very serious aquarist back in the day. The kid bought a bunch of tanks and gear and was selling the surplus to break even on the deal.

There were UG plates but no lifts, and they looked a bit too old as plastic goes. I left them behind. But all the probably 50 year old pumps and filters still work. I might take my homemade UGs that run on air and go with the smaller powerheads to get things done.