Aqua sobriquet
Member
I’ve read quite a bit about folks with leaking external filters, noisy filters etc and wondered what most folks experience of them are? Do they work as well as expected, are they easy to clean?
As an example, I bought a sera 130UV a while back and it seemed pretty good. Not as quiet as my Tetra but that’s exceptionally quiet. One day though I left the cleaning cycle a bit too long and found the whole inside of the filter was really messy. As the muck built up it obviously started to bypass the way the water normally flows and made a right mess of my biological media. This hadn’t happened before but I obviously left it too long. The way the trays are arranged with their “water pipes” can only be a guide as they aren’t sealed, just slotted together. I’ve managed to reduce the noise of my Eheim Classic so I’ve started using that instead. It’s not impossible for the water to bypass the media in this more simple design but it should be a bit better. I could improve it by removing the media container but it’s a convenient feature.
Have manufacturers tried to be too clever with their external filter designs? Surely the most efficient system is the simplest?
As an example, I bought a sera 130UV a while back and it seemed pretty good. Not as quiet as my Tetra but that’s exceptionally quiet. One day though I left the cleaning cycle a bit too long and found the whole inside of the filter was really messy. As the muck built up it obviously started to bypass the way the water normally flows and made a right mess of my biological media. This hadn’t happened before but I obviously left it too long. The way the trays are arranged with their “water pipes” can only be a guide as they aren’t sealed, just slotted together. I’ve managed to reduce the noise of my Eheim Classic so I’ve started using that instead. It’s not impossible for the water to bypass the media in this more simple design but it should be a bit better. I could improve it by removing the media container but it’s a convenient feature.
Have manufacturers tried to be too clever with their external filter designs? Surely the most efficient system is the simplest?