Filter Upgrade

[newbie fish keeper]

i have a 180 liter tank, the filter is a fluval 205, statistically the numbers work out but the filter does not seem to be doing its job properly, i have put water and gravel in from another tank, i have even put one of the sponges out of my old filter into the new filter for a couple of hours (just to kick start the filter...its been going for 4 weeks so its hardly a kick start) "MY MATE" has an eheim filter and he recommends it, i've had a look about on "TIN-TER-NET" dont know which one to get, classic, professional, Professional 2 and 3...endless the list is, if there is a filter jedi that could teach me the power of the filter i will be able to stop writing like a 12 year old star wars nut...lol

cheers

 

[Jazzzz]

what will your stocking be I hope there is nothing living in there or you are doing lots of water testing and changing.

 

[OldMan47]

A 2 hour contact with mature media is almost worse than useless. It makes you think it will do something while doing nothing. When we talk about getting a start from mature media, we are talking about leaving the mature media in the filter and doing a fishless cycle with it in there. You need to be doing at least 2 things. One is to feed your bacteria with pure ammonia or an organic source of ammonia. The other is giving the bacteria time to grow into a fully cycled system. If you have been running a filter on an empty tank without feeding it, you have been wasting your time. Water does not contain anything worth having in terms of bacteria and gravel has very little unless the tank it came from used an undergravel filter. The container for the filter media can be made by lots of different people including Eheim, Fluval, Rena, Marineland, Tetra-tec and others. If the filter runs quietly and doesn't leak on the floor it works as well as any other. The media is the thing you need to focus on getting working and that is a biological process. No particular brand name of hardware will do any better than any other.