DRock914

I remember when I was growing up I would see a lot of undergravel filters and powerheads at all the fish stores and a couple of my dad's tanks have them. Now I barely see any. Are they still recommended to be used on large aquariums or did they turn out to not be any good?

Shawnie

they turned out to be total waste trappers and very hard to clean and keep clean underneath

eiginh

+1

Nutter

They have thier place in certain tanks, but tanks with plants, an uneven bottom, fish that dig or almost any kind of decoration, won't benefit from them, they will in fact just be a pain in the rearend. Even in things like quarantine tanks you still need to use the reverse flow method & even then they are still a pain. Better off without them.

aquarist48

Hello DRock. I agree with above posters that Under Gravel Filters (UGF) are a waste of money in most cases and I don't recommend them. I feel like they trap waste in your tank that could be harmful to your cycle.
Ken

DRock914

Thanks for the help everyone. I had no plans of buying them anyway, just curious.

sickfish

I realise that I'm new here but I have to disagree with the majority of posts.

My tank uses undergravel filtration driven by my external Fluval 204 and a powerhead at opposing ends of the tank to provide balanced downstream through the gravel. In fairness, I also use an internal Fluval U2 (bought it recently to replace an older Fluval) to filter out any floaters but my water quality is excellent.

If I'm completely honest... I am thinking of stripping the tank down and removing the UGF since the U2 and the 204 are probably more than sufficient anyway - and then the fish would have about an extra inch of swimming space. The one thing stopping me is that right now everything is working... do I really want to mess with that?

Toddnbecka

Personally I think it depends on the tank setup and stocking. I use them in several tanks, all but one are reverse-flow. I use a layer of bulk filter media (blue/white bonded pad) between the plate and a relatively thin layer of gravel. The filter media provides more surface area for biofiltration than a much thicker layer of gravel would. The reverse-flow keeps debris from accumulating under the plates. The one tank that isn't reverse-flow is a 55. It has 2 aquaclear 110 HOB filters, one running each filter plate, that prevent debris from collecting uner the plates. The revrese-flow setups are run by aquaclear powerheads with quickfilter cartridges for prefilters. I use more of the blue/white media for those instead of the polishing pads than come with them. They collect most of the debris; whatever they don't gets siphoned out with partial water changes. IMO you can't beat that setup for internal filtration if you're keeping spiney eels or other species that are prone to escape through any opening.