i just bought two aqua tech under gravel filters for my 55 gallon tank. In addition I bought two aqua tech power heads 170 Gallons per hour. How do these hook up. The boxes say that you dont need the carbon filters that come with under gravel filter. is the power head a filter also? If not how should I hook up the filters to the power heads?
How to hook up filtration system
- Thread starter jwthomas
- Start date
Place the intake of the powerheads on the tubes protruding from the UGF. You'll need to remove the carbon filters from the tops of the tubes 1st...otherwise the powerheads won't fit. The powerheads are simply water pumps that suck water up the tubes from under the filter plate...as water is sucked out, new water is forced down through the substrate and through the plate. A reverse flow UGF does the opposite and is setup so the powerhead blows water down the tubes and up through the plate and substrate...using this method, you can add sponge prefilters to the intakes of the powerheads.
even though this post has ended like a month ago i'll still give you my two cents and it works.
what i did on my 55 gallon tank was to run to hagen aquaclear power filters (the more filtration the better) on each side of the tank (of course on the backside). connect the ug and the power filter via clear tube( probly will have to pick this up at the lfs). i did not use any power heads, but i suppose they could still work with the power filters. i walked away with crystal clear water.
what i did on my 55 gallon tank was to run to hagen aquaclear power filters (the more filtration the better) on each side of the tank (of course on the backside). connect the ug and the power filter via clear tube( probly will have to pick this up at the lfs). i did not use any power heads, but i suppose they could still work with the power filters. i walked away with crystal clear water.
I have done to my goldfish tank what Slappy outlined in his post (the reverse flow UGF) and I am very happy with how it works. The gravel stays pretty clean and since everyone knows how messy goldfish are, it's not too hard to see the benefits here! I'm going to try placing my powerhead (an AquaClear 802) a lot closer to the bottom to see if there is better flow and to make it easier to hide since I'm completely anal about not being able to see any of the equipment in my tanks. When I have it fixed up to my satisfaction I'll post some pics.
sky.eyes.woman said:
Sky, what additional filter do you have along with the reverse UGF? Currently looking at that for my upcoming tank.
Bryant
So, you have the UGF connected directly to the HOB power filter? The power filter then sucks water up through the uplift tube of the UGF, filters the water, and returns the filtered water to the aquarium?wannabefishguru said:
Interesting... how did you ever come up with this idea?
Peace...