Duel sponge filter

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View attachment 94755 I'm starting to really like sponge filters. @Byron has noted that filters circulate the water as a benefit more than actually cleaning the water and that their home for beneficial bacteria is their greatest asset. Sponge filters will never trap fry or stop working mechanically due to a stuck impeller or some such thing. The dark color blends well and they are cheap to operate. No cartridges or anything else to buy. I'm using this one in a 20 gallon. It's big at 4" tall and 4.5 inches in diameter but I like it.
I had one like that before i purchased the duel filter. Your right they are cheap to operate. Good value indeed :)
 
I run a hob filter and also a sponge filter in 3 of my tanks. If the hob filter stops working, the sponge filter will keep the beneficial bacteria at reasonable levels. And I can use one of the sponge filters in a hospital tank if needed for emergencies.
 
While I don't have the fancy duel sponge filters (don't you have any biological media less susceptible to losing the bacteria?) - any way - I was putting sponges on the end of my intake tube to my AquaClear filters, they were stopping the flow of the filter multiple times a day getting clogged with mostly plant debris (my tanks are fully planted and regularly "thinned" for maintenance, but worse yet they were "eating" all the lighterweight food - even when I turned the flow low during feeding time (that said, AquaClear doesn't have a big difference between "high" and "low" flow). Was told to wash the filters only in buckets of tank water - which was totally useless as they'd become completely saturated with food. I'd put the food in and they'd get sucked up immediately by the filters. The filtering of the AquaClear would come to a complete stop until I fully rinsed the filter in tap water, then a few hour or at best a day later - the same thing would happen.

Without the intake filters (shapped just like yours) I had absolutely no problem with the AquaClear stopping it's flow. I just occasionally pull a vine or two out of the plastic tubes or rinse them out if they are really bad and no food is trapped in the filter - so it doesn't smell and the fish are getting the food rather than the filters.

Anyway - you say these are slow flow - but do watch how much food debris gets trapped in them or your house will smell like a backyard full of dog poop. Worse yet, they'll be really slow flow because they'll stop filtering completely.
 
@Jan - clearly you need a coarser pre-filter sponge that won't easily plug up. Aquarium Coop has some nice ones. I have the medium size on my AC 70's and the Large size on the 110g stock tank and 37g grow out (with AC 70 filter).
I tried using a sponge from one of those duel sponge filters on the inlet tube of an Aquaclear 50, but (as you mention) the sponge porosity is just way too fine.

Any food trapped on the outside of a sponge filter is typically plucked off and soon eaten by fish so it's nearly never an issue.
 

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