Filter

[kdizzle]

what size of filter should I purchase for a 15 gallon tank? What should the filter be rated for gallons per hour?

 

[waterdrop]

Well, of course it all depends on what you want to accomplish in creating a particular infrastructure for a particular display of plants and animals. A fifteen with a light load of easy freshwater fish might run nicely with a little internal filter of hardly much size. On the other hand, if you were bent on aquascaping with a lot of plants and a lot of plant growth you might want to push up toward 10x turnover or something a bit crazy like that. Usually we generalize in the beginners section to recommending about a 5x turnover, which for your volume might be roughly 75 US gallons in an hour. In practice though this will probaby leave you looking at 100 ro 150 g/h filters as probably a better prospect. You might want to look at the whatever the smallest external cannister is from one of the major manufacturers such as Rena, Eheim, etc. or you might want to look at the AquaClear (AC) HOB (hang on back) filters if you are on more of a budget with the tank. There is a little more water noise from an HOB as opposed to an internal or an external cannister filter. Ease of maintenance will be about the same for all these types given the smaller size of this aquarium. Anyway, good luck and I hope this helps a little as you get started figuring it out!

~~waterdrop~~