Under Gravel Filter Direction?

[sigfreund]

It has been about 20 years since I have kept an aquarium and am setting up a 70 gallon. I will have an under gravel filter and an external filter (Magnum 350). Could I plumb my aquarium so that the output from the Magnum external filter is discharged into the under gravel filter? My thought is cleaning the external filter is a lot easier than vacuuming so why not trap the solid waste in the external filter instead of sucking it down into the gravel requiring vacuuming. The undergravel filter will still function as a biologican filter breaking down the finer waste. What would be good or bad about this setup?

 

[Mikaila31]

You can do it that way. One thing about UGF is that they ideally should be run in a reverse direction with a prefilter. So I don't see a problem since yours would be going in reverse. That way instead of sucking debris into the gravel it pushes it out and keeps stuff from building up under the UGF plate.

 

[GhettoFish]

i just dont see the point and hassle of having the UGF in the first place then,i mean at some you will still have to do some vacuming anyway so why not just ditch the UGF,or is it just purely to push up the big bits constantly to the filter intake?