Local fish dealer says no way can I do with out under water gravel filter

grannylvsfish

grannylvsfish

have you been bad this year ??
Dec 6, 2006
3,124
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Montana
I had a long discussion with him on filtering the tank, he said do not do bio wheel, its just pushing small amounts of water, and makes the tank evaporate faster. He said there is no way tanks can do well with out one, and that the back of the tank fiters can never cover enough surface to ever do a good job.
I tried to tell him that you all do very well with your tanks and do not like the under water gravel filters, he says thats a cop out, that if you have decent pumps you could have them work efficiently. I told him I did not use one, I was told a good back filter works well. he said nope, I will have problems. he says there is a filter out there called the milinium that will do some what better but if it was up to him I should use both under gravel and back filter.
who's right? he has been running this pet store 18 years, and says no amount of back filtering can do what a gravel on can. that the gravel will stagnate if I do not use one.
 
I am a fan of using the UGF however, my 75 set will be the first tank I go without it.

The gravel will not stagnate if you follow the correct and throrough procedures of gravel vacuuming. This is all part of maintenance, both having one and not having one. Some whould even say that the UGF holds too much bad bacteria than helpful...
 
UGF were the standard for aquariums for a long time. They do work and the longevity of them proves this. Some people get stuck in their own ways (if it's not broke don't fix it attitude). If the owner has always used UGF and had sucess with them, he probably hasn't experimented much with other types of filtration.
 
Any of the typcial filtration methods has good and bad points. All require maintanence though. The UGF are fine filters but the RUGF's are better.
 
I only briefly used a UGF with my first tank - a 10 gallon. I ended up with a small HOB that worked great.

My current 12 gallon setup uses the bio-wheel and I'm really liking it. It will (hopefully) be heavily planted one day, so I don't plan on doing too much gravel vacuuming - it'll be too hard to get to the gravel without disturbing plant roots and the rocks and driftwood I have in there.
 
TKOS said:
Any of the typcial filtration methods has good and bad points. All require maintanence though. The UGF are fine filters but the RUGF's are better.
Click to expand...


I agree, RUGF's help reduce all the bio debris that accumulates under the UGF screen.

Spidergrrrl said:
I only briefly used a UGF with my first tank - a 10 gallon. I ended up with a small HOB that worked great.
Click to expand...

Heh, me too... took too much space from the gravel IMO and I would have to put too much gravel just to bury the fake plants I used at the time, so I tossed it.

That 10g is now a planted tank, with plenty of malaysian trumpet snails (the other MTS) to keep the gravel aerated between water changes (50% a week).
 
I guess he isn't familiar with the ceramic filter medias that are available.....

UGF works, but what if you have sand as a substrate.....what if you want plants????


All filtration will work just fine. Maybe he's thinking of HOB filters that have replaceable cartridges. Those can cause problems if not done with some thought.
 
just remember, if he has been an avid fish owner for 18 years, he's set in his ways and in all likelyhood has not even tried a biowheel or other filter. for the same reason that my grandmother still has a betamax!
 
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