Filterless aquarium

[Guyb93]

Here in the Uk energy prices are on the rise fairly drastically to be fair meaning for a lot of people including myself feeling the impact of simple tasks like keeping your children warm , refusing to work more to sustain my way of life I’m looking at little things that may not be needed are first think is obviously luxury like aquariums looking at my set up iv been adding watts to £ and shutting down my filter would effectively save me £218 per year in the uk 2022 .
Sounds trivial but it’s the same as keeping a freezer cold
Having a large tank I’m pretty sure biology wise my water would be just as neat but there has to be side effects surely ? My filter is mainly mechanical anyways I’m guessing my tank would just appear dirtier

 

[Waterbabe]

I have 3 tanks 2 of which are considerably smaller, these 2 I run without a filter system. The large tank I wouldn't be able to due to the depth and vacuuming reasons.
The 2 tanks I run bio are full of plants and pretty much clean themselves, water is crystal clear but I do vacuum the sand every week and and do small water changes. My garden pond is also a natural bio it's never ever had filtration just a good top up every now and again. The plants and floating weed really do their bit in all the tanks. I'm not over stocked so its very manageable, not sure how things would turn out for you, maybe give it a try Guy.

 

[Colin_T]

SOLAR PANELS AND BATTERY STORAGE.

Here in the Uk energy prices are on the rise fairly drastically to be fair meaning for a lot of people including myself feeling the impact of simple tasks like keeping your children warm , refusing to work more to sustain my way of life I’m looking at little things that may not be needed are first think is obviously luxury like aquariums looking at my set up iv been adding watts to £ and shutting down my filter would effectively save me £218 per year in the uk 2022 .
Sounds trivial but it’s the same as keeping a freezer cold
Having a large tank I’m pretty sure biology wise my water would be just as neat but there has to be side effects surely ? My filter is mainly mechanical anyways I’m guessing my tank would just appear dirtier

That seems like a lot of money for 1 filter. What brand and size filter is it?

How much do you lot pay per kilowatt of power?
I pay about 35cents per kilowatt (1000 watts) for power, plus we have a supply charge of about $30 a month.

Filters remove sediment and keep ammonia and nitrite at 0ppm. They also circulate the water and stabilise oxygen levels via surface turbulence. This also prevents an oily film from building up on the meniscus.

A good quality air pump running a couple of air operated sponge filters might be cheaper and still give you some filtration, aeration and water movement. But you also get the white noise of the pump running and bubble bubble.

 

[Guyb93]

SOLAR PANELS AND BATTERY STORAGE.


That seems like a lot of money for 1 filter. What brand and size filter is it?

How much do you lot pay per kilowatt of power?
I pay about 35cents per kilowatt (1000 watts) for power, plus we have a supply charge of about $30 a month.

Filters remove sediment and keep ammonia and nitrite at 0ppm. They also circulate the water and stabilise oxygen levels via surface turbulence. This also prevents an oily film from building up on the meniscus.

A good quality air pump running a couple of air operated sponge filters might be cheaper and still give you some filtration, aeration and water movement. But you also get the white noise of the pump running and bubble bubble.

I pay 0.28 per watt British so around 0.5 Australian my fx6 filter costs around £155 a year and the small sponge around £50 a year just some quick maths on what I can find online
It’s basically 80w between the two

 

[Colin_T]

That's a lot of power consumption for a filter. I have powerheads and pumps here that use 4-10 watts per hour.

I just checked online and a lot of the newer power filters use more power than the older ones from 20 years ago.

 

[Wills]

Do you not have bioballs/ ceramic in the middle sections of the FX filters? You will have a lot of bio filtration in there, I dont think you would be able to do it with big cichlids and plecos I think its just asking too much of the plants.

Wills

 

[itiwhetu]

Run an air pump and sponge filters.

 

[GaryE]

A working filter is like an internal organ for a tank - a key part of the cycle. Whether you could go filterless would depend on a lot of factors, the main one being whether you could be happy with one small fish per 5 gallons, with a very limited range of species choices. I could eliminate filtration for several (not all) of my killies, although I would have to up the water change routine.

With no filters, many of my killies, all my Cichlids, tetras and rainbows, and most of my tanks (because of shape and oxygen levels) would have to go.

Filters allow higher stocking. If costs push us to shut them down, the solution would be swamp evolved species with larger tanks and fewer fish.

I have heard that the hobby in Japan, after the nuclear power plant disaster, has changed radically, and medakas have taken off as mainstream choices because they have killie-like needs.

 

[Guyb93]

Do you not have bioballs/ ceramic in the middle sections of the FX filters? You will have a lot of bio filtration in there, I dont think you would be able to do it with big cichlids and plecos I think its just asking too much of the plants.

Wills

I do have ceramics maybe a kilo but not loads , at the moment my water tests have been perfect for over a month 0ppm of nh3 no2 and no3 , nutrition in the water seems low as my monstera and peace lily are starting to have some browning to the leaves and growth has slowed very fast , the tank stocking is all over the place at the moment and I’m keeping fish I don’t intend to keep after the pairing process , currently I’m keeping 4 electric blue acara with 2 acara X terror hybrids along with 14 Colombian tetra and 6 emperor tetra and obviously the stupid pleco, by next month the aim is to be down to a pair of eba and maybe il keep one hybrid just for keeps sakes the common pleco will go and the phantom will go back in effectively halfong the bio load possibly more I do plan on adding another 10 of the emperor tetra though , I’m currently changing 250-400l of water per week out of Enjoyment really I just like doing it , I was thinking with the changed stock and the over sized weekly water changes I’d be ok maybe a small amounts of n03
This is something iv never tried and I’m not 100% condfident in my theory but I know I have 50kg of sand along with that again in wood and slate storing lots of bacteria I just need somebody to say yeah go for it ahahah

 

[Guyb93]

A working filter is like an internal organ for a tank - a key part of the cycle. Whether you could go filterless would depend on a lot of factors, the main one being whether you could be happy with one small fish per 5 gallons, with a very limited range of species choices. I could eliminate filtration for several (not all) of my killies, although I would have to up the water change routine.

With no filters, many of my killies, all my Cichlids, tetras and rainbows, and most of my tanks (because of shape and oxygen levels) would have to go.

Filters allow higher stocking. If costs push us to shut them down, the solution would be swamp evolved species with larger tanks and fewer fish.

I have heard that the hobby in Japan, after the nuclear power plant disaster, has changed radically, and medakas have taken off as mainstream choices because they have killie-like needs.

I would cut stock but not change it , I see everybody’s point of filtration just water is a lot cheaper than energy in uk and if there is a way around the cost of the filter with a bit more work of like to give it a shot
It’s by far an empty tank 50kg of sand and the sameness in wood and rock which hold some bacteria I know probably not enough but I’m also hydroponic growing monstera and peace lily which are doing a good job of eating the nastiest
Problem I’m seeing is of it works great if it don’t it’s going to be bad because the bacteria in the filter will die after a week or so of not running iv heard unless that’s false and the filter will remains fully cycled as long as it’s wet

 

[Deleted member 149562]

My aquarium is 53 gallons, has two filters (one with UV), two heaters (preset), RGB MCR lighting and I worked out - with the help of my smart meter - that it uses around 25% of the electricity that a TV left on standby uses in a year.

Dropping what is a life support system in an aquarium such as the filter is going to be a false economy in the longterm. It won't cut the bills and will likely cause health issues in the fish who by virtue of being trapped in a glass box, need good filtration and water flow even in a heavy planted aquarium....and if you added up the cost of buying the fish in the first place, that cost will potentially be far higher than running filtration in the aquarium.

 

[Wills]

I do have ceramics maybe a kilo but not loads , at the moment my water tests have been perfect for over a month 0ppm of nh3 no2 and no3 , nutrition in the water seems low as my monstera and peace lily are starting to have some browning to the leaves and growth has slowed very fast , the tank stocking is all over the place at the moment and I’m keeping fish I don’t intend to keep after the pairing process , currently I’m keeping 4 electric blue acara with 2 acara X terror hybrids along with 14 Colombian tetra and 6 emperor tetra and obviously the stupid pleco, by next month the aim is to be down to a pair of eba and maybe il keep one hybrid just for keeps sakes the common pleco will go and the phantom will go back in effectively halfong the bio load possibly more I do plan on adding another 10 of the emperor tetra though , I’m currently changing 250-400l of water per week out of Enjoyment really I just like doing it , I was thinking with the changed stock and the over sized weekly water changes I’d be ok maybe a small amounts of n03
This is something iv never tried and I’m not 100% condfident in my theory but I know I have 50kg of sand along with that again in wood and slate storing lots of bacteria I just need somebody to say yeah go for it ahahah

I've never looked into it properly but you could look at the Walstead method? There is a calculation you can do with it but its not totally perfect and not really designed for big fish even if lightly stocked.

The problem is that the stakes are very high - if it goes wrong your going to end up with an ammonia spike and real issues for your fish. The problem is too that uptake from the plants is slow - eg if you just turned your filter off it would take days maybe weeks for the plants to grow enough to use up the new levels of ammonia and nitrite etc.

I wonder what the most energy efficient filter is?

Wills

 

[Guyb93]

I've never looked into it properly but you could look at the Walstead method? There is a calculation you can do with it but its not totally perfect and not really designed for big fish even if lightly stocked.

The problem is that the stakes are very high - if it goes wrong your going to end up with an ammonia spike and real issues for your fish. The problem is too that uptake from the plants is slow - eg if you just turned your filter off it would take days maybe weeks for the plants to grow enough to use up the new levels of ammonia and nitrite etc.

I wonder what the most energy efficient filter is?

Wills

Iv never looked into the most energy efficient filter in fairness iv always just looked at what offers the most filtration but I see the point some filtration is better than non at all , I can just see a few hours of overtime coming up to be fair probably easier to earn it that try and cheat it , thanks Boris for that one , I’m definitely going to be looking more into efficiency and self sustainable methods even if it means plumbing a sump with a small pump just to increase water volume give myself more wiggle room with mistakes

 

[Deleted member 149562]

Take a look at Aquael Turbo filters....they come in 500, 1000, 1500 and 2000 depending on size of aquarium

I have a 2000 version with flow rate at its lowest, its a bog standard ultra basic internal filter that you can use media as if a miniature external. It is a brilliant little filter, mine has two media cans (you can buy spare cans along with spray bars etc).

My other filter is the Aquael Unifilter 750 with optional UV (it also comes with a blanked out flow variation in the box to use instead of the UV - the UV is on a second plug so you do not need to run it constantly)

 

[Guyb93]

Take a look at Aquael Turbo filters....they come in 500, 1000, 1500 and 2000 depending on size of aquarium

I have a 2000 version with flow rate at its lowest, its a bog standard ultra basic internal filter that you can use media as if a miniature external. It is a brilliant little filter, mine has two media cans (you can buy spare cans along with spray bars etc).

My other filter is the Aquael Unifilter 750 with optional UV (it also comes with a blanked out flow variation in the box to use instead of the UV - the UV is on a second plug so you do not need to run it constantly)

Iv saw filterless tanks before just not with my stocking , I’d like to shutdown the filter for 3 days to see if anything happens I’d be confident if it did spike it would be minor after 3 days and would give me some sort of idea at what biological filtration the tank has already , honestly if after 3 days I have a 30ppm no3 reading id be happy 70% water change and I’m good for another 3 days , I wouldn’t mind a mid week change as long as it’s sustainable in the long run