Canister Filter Recommendations

Before you spend lots of money on a new canister filter, try googling filters for planted aquaria. I've been reading about the effects of live plants on stocking capacity and there was a lot of commentary on the role of a filter in a planted tank. In summary, in a planted tank, a filter provides mechanical filtration and water flow; the plants provide the biological and chemical filtration.

If I remember correctly, you inject CO2, @daveyng ? I think @TopCookie  may have a lower tech set up.

Yeah, Helen is on the money...  Definitely geared towards low tech as much as possible...

Interesting point on the 10x flow rate for filters...  I've seen this figure recommended many times in a variety of places... 

My set up is 170 litre tank and 850 l/h filter...  This equates to a 5x flow rate, which seems a little underpowered to me...  There is the surface skimmer which is rated at 300 l/h too but then with both running, there is a significant flow, perhaps edging towards too much even, just slightly... 

I can't imagine what a flow of 1,700 l/h would be like, but I suspect it would be too much flow in my set up... 

Gave the little Eheim filter a bit of a service today...  Couldn't be any easier...!!!  What a great little product and bargain priced, too... 

Hard to be objective about it at the moment Matt, as I have cut several affected areas of the filamentous algae away and things look better for sure - but difficult to know if the new and temporarily high fertiliser routine is impacting or not tbh...  The plants certainly look to be enjoying this new regime at the mo and that was always the theory, to get the plants growing well again and out-competing the algae for nutrients etc...  I suspect it will take quite a while before seeing any major results with the algae... 

Total fertiliser dose is now 3ml a day, or 21ml per week...  I estimate my tank to hold about 150L of water so the TNC recommended dose should be around 15ml per week...  Once I get to the end of week two of this high dosing regime, I'll cut it back to 2ml per day so as to get back on target with what TNC recommend...

Broadly following the Diana Walstad method, I try to keep my water changing to a minimum - a conscious decision & plan from day 1...  I would say that my average is 10% per week... 

The Walstad thing is key here though, in that the sub-substrate is John Innes #3 and the whole low tech plan is that the mulm should "feed" the substrate, which is a high CEC rated choice... 

I realize that this thread was started almost eight months ago but I would like to add another suggestion. If the requirement is to increase circulation rather than filtration, why not add a circulation pump? In my 125 litre setup, I use a Eheim Ecco Pro 130 in conjunction with the Eheim streamON+ 2000, which can shift up to 2000l/h. Just a thought.

JPC