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Liberty HOB / Aquaball or another??

Pinkmummy79

Pinkmummy79

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Joined
5 Dec 2012
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335
Location
Weston Super Mare
So I've had an Aqua One Aquaspace 40 tank sitting around collecting dust for about a year, was originally bought as a quarantine tank, so it's about time I cracked on and filled it with water. This will be a low tech dirted tank with plans for some red cherry shrimp, and maybe half a dozen Galaxy Rasboras.

The original filter is poor so as this will be sitting on a nice decorative table in the hallway I am steering away from a cannister filter just purely for aesthetic reasons.

After much homework on here my two initial filter choices would be either
Eheim Liberty HOB filter - unsure which size to go for here, 75, 130 or largest is 200, I know they're adjustable flow but which one would be best suited? the 130? I have no experience HOBS sorry..
The flow rates are supposed to be:
75 = 75 to 380l/ph
130 = 130 to 570 l/ph
200 = 200 to 760 l/ph
or
an Aquaball probably the 60?

Only downside to these i see is they're in the tank, not really a problem for me but if the HOB will work for my purposes then I quite fance one.
any persuasion either way would be helpful, cheers, also open to other ideas
Clive
 
Hi all,
The Eheim Liberty HOBs are OK. I've got one, I threw away all the cartridges etc. and put a sponge on the intake, and glass rings in the body. Downside is that they are a bit noisy <"Which filter for a 60l......">. I would think for your set-up any-one would do size wise.

I also like the Eheim Aquaballs, I use these as my "belt and braces" extra filter in tanks with an external filter. I like them because they keep going even if you let them get quite clogged.

I run mine with the venturi fitting. I think you have to pay extra for this, but I got all of mine 2nd hand.

My other option is the Koi sponge/Maxijet combo described in "Which filter......". Maxijets power-heads last for ever, and you have a big sponge for biological filtration, but they are a bit obvious unless you have very weedy tanks.

cheers Darrel
 
I don't know the size of the tank, but for a realy low maintenance filter consider making a "hamburger matten filter" in it, you can hide the pump and the heater behind it and even grow plants on the foam. Use black foam for even less visibility
 
Cheers guys
Thanks Darrel, I've been reading your past posts which have led me to these two options
I suppose i could follow suit get one to start then the other next month and add it too, so long as i dont go full throttle on the flow they should be fine together and that way I'll always have a filter ready should i manage a nice shrimp tank or something next yr.

Ed, here's the tank, nothing special but i can use it so why not
Its 26 x 40 x 36 cm 30l
e0a098d88b3f5beb381f9947f6664e00.jpg
 
Just any small waterpump, the foam does the filtering.
Something as simple as this:
full8103876.jpg

Just poke the outflow through the foam. I use one like this in a 45 lit parosphromenus tank. I have foam all over one side (so not just a corner).
 
Hi all

I used to have in a nano 24 liters tank a corner filter from Eheim (Aquacorner) which is based on the same concept: a large (not that large as mentioned) inflow foam and an outlow (in that case not a straight jet,but an open outflow designed to ripple the surface). I was not very happy with it as the inflow foam was continuously clogged with plant debris and it was very difficult to manage. Shrimps loved it but I found the foam had to be cleaned very frequently and each time I touched it the tank was like a big cloud of floating debris... Thus 60% water changes were needed. In such a small tank WCs are not a problem but my guess is that until I realized this, these debris breaking down in my tank were a continuous source of brown diatoms. Maybe such large and frequent changes (2x 60% WC) in such a small volume were too much for developing good bacteria colonies... Not sure. But once I changed to a canister filter brown diatoms disappeared. It is a low tech, low light densely planted tank.
How do you manage to get those extra large inflow surfaces without having this problem? Do you siphon/wash the foam frequently?

Jordi
 
Don't use very fine foam, use quite coarse foam, it should never be clogged. These HMF are ment to stay in place for at least a year. The relative huge volume and large surface means that you'll have plenty space for a biofilm to occur. This is where the bacteria live. I put the outflow high to get the surface movement i want. They never never never run dry.
15262377133_117d070112_b.jpg2014-11-26 08.51.10 by Edvet, on Flickr
This is the HMF in the parotank. You can see the black foam is just wedged in. Left back corner you see the top of an Aquaflow 50, I have some small leaved javafern stuck on the foam tankside, Left from the foam is the heater and some extra catappa leaves. For a corner filter you can use almost the same width foam (5 cm!).
 
Hi all,
Edvet said:
Don't use very fine foam, use quite coarse foam, it should never be clogged.
Click to expand...
I like the coarse PPI10 or PPI20 sponge as well. You have a thick wall of it so it still has plenty of space for biological filtration.

If you get real Poret foam it is quite stiff and self supporting. I've still got a couple of big sheets for if we ever set the lab. back up, but it is the bright blue PPI10 stuff.

I've used the 12" x 4" x 4" drilled Koi blocks in the tanks. These are black and PPI20.

cheers Darrel
 
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