I have one of the EX series running on a 10 gallon that houses my Limia melanogaster colony. It seems to be a decent enough filter if you don't throw away the cartridge the way that they advise you to do. I just rinse mine out when the water flow slows down. Compared to most cartridge type filters it has two advantages that I can see. The pump location makes it self priming and the "biofilter" that they include will help a little if you do change the cartridge. I still prefer to rinse out my old cartridge and re-use it but Whisper needs to make money off of someone. Somebody must be buying their cartridges and replacing them.
Your high KH and pH is not likely to slow your cycle at all. What have you done to jump start the bacteria colony? Can you get some media from an established tank or even some substrate or a plant that will contain traces of the bacteria that we want to develop? Any source that contains a few bacteria will give you something to work with while dosing ammonia. By borrowing bacteria from another source, such as an established filter, I find that I can usually cycle a new tank in under a week. Without that source, I have no clue how long each new cycle will take because it depends on random chance how many bacteria my new filter will get to work with.
Your high KH and pH is not likely to slow your cycle at all. What have you done to jump start the bacteria colony? Can you get some media from an established tank or even some substrate or a plant that will contain traces of the bacteria that we want to develop? Any source that contains a few bacteria will give you something to work with while dosing ammonia. By borrowing bacteria from another source, such as an established filter, I find that I can usually cycle a new tank in under a week. Without that source, I have no clue how long each new cycle will take because it depends on random chance how many bacteria my new filter will get to work with.
nice filter.
0.25 ppm.
... and probably throw it out....
