should i nix my filter?

putting live plants in a tank doesn't actually prevent your cycle, but simply does it in a different way. no big deal there.

bettas don't like a lot of water current. imagine trying to swim in a current with those huge fins! anyway, if your filter is making too much of a current in your tank I would suggest getting a thin piece of foam and attaching it below the spill from your filter. it'll give your bacteria colony more room to live and, more importantly, diffuse the water coming out of the filter so it doesn't cause a big current for your fish.

I'm not very familiar with an eclipse setup, so I'm not sure how exactly you would attach the foam, but even if you could find a way to suction cup it to the side of the tank under the spill it should work.

otherwise you might be ok taking the filter out if you are able to do 50% water changes every 2 days (3 gallons isn't too big).

good luck!

You can usually slow down the current of a filter by slipping a spare sponge over the filter intake, and/or a piece of sponge or nylon over the output. I've used this technique on a 3 gallon betta tank with success.

If you're willing to do regular water changes (100% weekly is the usual in a small lightly planted tank) a non-filtered betta tank is quite do-able. But you'll need to vaccuum the gravel regularly during water changes to keep the tank clean.

Putting live plants in the tank can indeed prevent a true cycle, if you have enough of them to consume all the ammonia in your tank. If plants are consuming all the nutrients in the water, your filter cannot build up a bacterial colony in the filter because there's nothing for them to feed on. Using plants to start up and maintain a new tank is called a "silent cycle", but it's really not a cycle at all, because if you were to take all the plants out, your filter could not process the ammonia and a potentially lethal ammonia/nitrite spike could still occur.

Ms.Bubbles said:

"silent cycle", but it's really not a cycle at all, because if you were to take all the plants out, your filter could not process the ammonia and a potentially lethal ammonia/nitrite spike could still occur.

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good point. I was a little off in my reasoning there

I would suggest for you to buy a Whisper 1-3i. It uses an irpump to pump water and pumps 20 gph. I used one for my betta in the ever so popular 2.5 gallon mini bow. Read my review here.
http://www.petfish.net/reviews/Whisper_In_Tank_Filter_1-3i.php

wouldn't that take up a lot of space in a 3gallon tank though? I had bought one for a 10 gallon once but returned it because it hogged so much space, so I can only imaigne how big it would be in a 3 gallon.