Hi Colin_T, I never liked that little filter. It barely moved surface water and the intake was stubby, only going down about 1/4 of the way to the bottom. It was given to me when I purchased another tank, so I guess I canāt complain too much. The filter doesnāt appear to come apart and I donāt want to break it. It went to a small hexagon shaped 2 gallon aquarium. We had a power outage and when power came back on the little pump was no longer moving water at all so I decided I was done with it.
While I was out running around for work I picked up a small 5 gallon tank and I have a small TopFin PF10 Silentstream filter that is more like a normal filter. I can take it apart easily and clean the impeller, etc. Iāve never been one to use air pumps in my tanks, although the most recent one I purchased used came with one so I have been using it on that tank. On this little 5 gallon tank I am now looking for a small sponge to put on the intake. Right now Iāve only got 6 shrimp in the tank, but if they begin to breed I would like to keep babies from getting sucked up. Plus, Iād like to give them additional grazing area.
So now Iām looking for small pre-filters to stick on the intake of this small filter. What I find in the stores have a hole that is too big for this small filterās intake tube. Looks like I may need to make my own although Iād rather buy one ready to go.
Here is a pic of the new little unheated shrimp tank. Everything has been transferred over from the smaller tank. Iāll leave half the floor bare on the right side. The tiny filter media was placed inside the new filter along with the new filter cartridge that fits this new little filter.
The tank has one spindly water sprite, a dwarf sag, lots of floating hornwort and a clump of java moss. There is a piece of cholla wood, some catalpa leaves and a few alder cones. I also have a holey-block made of ceramic to which Iāve glued some taiwan triangle moss. There is also a few stems of anacharis that have been picked over pretty well by the amphipods. When I switched tanks I moved most of the amphipods to a new container to continue colonizing. Only a few of the snails were brought into this new tank also. Many of those went with the excess amphipods.