JMorgan
Member
Having spent many hours of fruitless searching I'm hoping that someone here can point me in the right direction to get hold of some decent quality polyether foam/sponge filters. Possibly in Germany or the Netherlands?
Roughly 18 months ago I quite suddenly needed to expand the number of tanks to cope with growing out a few hundred angelfish fry. At that time I just got hold of what I thought were OK sponge filters - the sort typically sold on amazon and eBay, but which seem pretty universal at my LFS and other online stores. They are not terrible, but nor are they good quality. After less than two years of use with regular servicing, they are already beginning to lose proper elasticity and "bounce" making them increasingly difficult to clean and less effective with every month that passes.
Ted Judy has a good video describing the difference between polyether and polyester foams for anyone interested: The relevant bit starts about 5 minutes in.
Since I broadly dislike the idea of "throwaway" products I've been researching this over the last few months and it seems so far to be a fairly cynical policy to sell filters made from polyethylene, not so much because its substantially cheaper, but because it will eventually just stop working and is then impossible to restore, forcing punters to buy again. As Ted describes, polyether can be restored even with quite harsh chemicals and he's had the same filters running for ten years plus no problem.
Having written to UK based companies selling polyether foam (on far too large a scale for the likes of me) it turns out that EMW Filtertechnik GmbH, the German source of polyether foam branded as Poret foam, touted by numerous USA based you-tubers and sold in the USA by Swiss Tropicals, is not in fact manufactured by EMW Filtertechnik, who are just "convertors" of the foam. In plain English that means they get hold of the foam in large sheets and cut it up, branding it as "Poret" and investing it with miraculous powers in the process, when it is in reality just bog standard polyether foam, minus additives that would make it unsuitable for aquarists.
This makes it all the more absurd from the perspective of air miles and carbon footprint to import back to the UK by buying from Swiss Tropicals in the USA a product made in Europe, probably Germany. Even more absurdly the only other source I've found is a bloke in New Zealand - which is beyond ridiculous.
That all said I have spoken (briefly and in passing) to UK hobbyists who've imported decent polyether foam filters from Germany, but those German websites I've found either don't seem to export to the UK or don't offer any information regarding what the filters are made of: polyethylene and polyether look pretty much the same in a typical online store photo!
So please if you know of a European company website that sells a decent quality polyether sponge filter let me know - I'm looking for both the basic round or rectangular shapes and also sheets of foam to use with HMF set ups - as I also think its pretty silly to be paying for convoluted or profiled foam where one is essentially paying extra for the foam they've cut away, AKA . . . air!
That's surely a step beyond paying manufacturers to add water to dry ferts!
cheers
Roughly 18 months ago I quite suddenly needed to expand the number of tanks to cope with growing out a few hundred angelfish fry. At that time I just got hold of what I thought were OK sponge filters - the sort typically sold on amazon and eBay, but which seem pretty universal at my LFS and other online stores. They are not terrible, but nor are they good quality. After less than two years of use with regular servicing, they are already beginning to lose proper elasticity and "bounce" making them increasingly difficult to clean and less effective with every month that passes.
Ted Judy has a good video describing the difference between polyether and polyester foams for anyone interested: The relevant bit starts about 5 minutes in.
Since I broadly dislike the idea of "throwaway" products I've been researching this over the last few months and it seems so far to be a fairly cynical policy to sell filters made from polyethylene, not so much because its substantially cheaper, but because it will eventually just stop working and is then impossible to restore, forcing punters to buy again. As Ted describes, polyether can be restored even with quite harsh chemicals and he's had the same filters running for ten years plus no problem.
Having written to UK based companies selling polyether foam (on far too large a scale for the likes of me) it turns out that EMW Filtertechnik GmbH, the German source of polyether foam branded as Poret foam, touted by numerous USA based you-tubers and sold in the USA by Swiss Tropicals, is not in fact manufactured by EMW Filtertechnik, who are just "convertors" of the foam. In plain English that means they get hold of the foam in large sheets and cut it up, branding it as "Poret" and investing it with miraculous powers in the process, when it is in reality just bog standard polyether foam, minus additives that would make it unsuitable for aquarists.
This makes it all the more absurd from the perspective of air miles and carbon footprint to import back to the UK by buying from Swiss Tropicals in the USA a product made in Europe, probably Germany. Even more absurdly the only other source I've found is a bloke in New Zealand - which is beyond ridiculous.
That all said I have spoken (briefly and in passing) to UK hobbyists who've imported decent polyether foam filters from Germany, but those German websites I've found either don't seem to export to the UK or don't offer any information regarding what the filters are made of: polyethylene and polyether look pretty much the same in a typical online store photo!
So please if you know of a European company website that sells a decent quality polyether sponge filter let me know - I'm looking for both the basic round or rectangular shapes and also sheets of foam to use with HMF set ups - as I also think its pretty silly to be paying for convoluted or profiled foam where one is essentially paying extra for the foam they've cut away, AKA . . . air!
That's surely a step beyond paying manufacturers to add water to dry ferts!
cheers