Your UGF experiences

thebrandon

thebrandon

I like fish
Jan 29, 2009
1,846
0
36
Tucson, AZ
I just wanted to know the experiences you have had with UGF's.

I personally wanted to find out which worked better, UGF or just gravel. So in my 55 gallon tank(which had an unfortunate accident:() I set it up so only half of the tank had UGF and the other had just gravel. When ever I vacuumed the UGF side obviously had way less debris to be sucked up, which I honestly think is great because I love bottom dwellers and I think they desirve to have a clean substrate to dig through and burrow in.

After that experiment I have had UGF filters in most of my tanks along with other filtration. I don't think that UGF should be the main sorce of filtration for a tank.

I plan on using UGF in my 125 build:)

What are your experiences, likes and dislikes about this method?
 
I think perhaps you should do more study on this. UGF's are obsolete. The mulm you didn't see in your gravel is under the filter plate. It will stay there with you unable to remove it. Over time this will contribute to build up of wastes. When you just have gravel you can vacuum it to remove most of the mulm.

20 years ago almost everyone used UGF's. There is a reason why very few use them now.

Also bottom feeders LIKE stuff in the gravel to eat. What would be the point of a bottom dweller sifting through clean gravel???
 
Sand is the ideal in my experience. There is a whole article on it in my blog.

I wouldn't use an UGF if you gave it to me and paid me to use it.
 
I must say for years I only used gravel as my substrate. In the last few months I took the jump to sand. I love the natural look. I also think fish enjoy sand much more as they can dig in it and move it around. Sand does require a little more care in vacuuming but I have the technique down now :)
 
i like the ugf.
it is efficient and in my experience, maintains a stable biological environment.

it only needs to be cleaned once every six months or so, but that is like no big deal.

also, keeping live plants with the ugf plate can get complicated when the root systems weave themselves through the slats of the filter.
on the flip side though those roots find tremendous nourishment from the rich amount of material under the plates.
 
Well heres my experience, I just had my first fish breed. I had an ugf. The parents started digging. Bam, bye bye babies.
 
i have a UGF on my 5.5 fry tank and i hate it. when feeding fry food (powdered) the food would go stright to the bottom and i had a bad outbreak of planaria.

im going to go with sand and see what happens.
 
I use them in all my tanks with gravel or crushed coral substrate. Debris doesn't build up under the plates because I either run hob filters through the lift tubes or use prefiltered powerheads rigged for reverse flow. (I don't use the reverse flow option on the powerheads, just plumbed the plates with suitable diameter vinyl tubing and pvc elbows to allow full flow.)
Tanks with sand substrates use canister filters.
 
I use UGF and RUGF. UGF is definitely not an obsolete filtration method. In fact most polls taken will show you they are still very popular by a large margin. I don't experience any build up under the plates and never have.
 
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