I have been running Mattenfilters for a number of years now. I began when I started talking to Dr. Tanner about the nitrifying bacteria and the role of the newly discovered ammonia oxidizing Archaea were. I also began using Poret foams at the same time. I would also confirm my set-up plans with Dr. T before buying from him as well. Here is how I do things and why.
The greater the ppi of foam, the faster it will clog. Therefore what porosity one chooses for what application matters. I am a big fan of the 20 ppi foam in side of hang-ons and canisters. I also use the 10 ppi for prefilters and tank dividers. I have only a few 30 ppi c3x3 cubefilters for fry tanks. They would also be fine in shrimp tanks but I only have my shrimp in tanks with fish and plants.
One of the reasons I chose Poret and especially Matten was because they need to cleaned a whole lot less often than other cheaper and lower quality foam. I have had Poret fpoam based filtration run for years before I had to clean it.
Initially, I ran my Mattens using small return pumps. But I have long since converted them all to air power. I also have one tank I experimented with. I use a lot of 33L for my plecos which is also where the Matten are. Instead of using a single 20 ppi foam 3 inches thick. I used a 2 inch foam at either end. However, I anticipated it would not be the best design having over the top returns at either end of the tank pushing their outputs at each other.
So to avoid this I came up with a design I felt would work better. On one end the Matten has the standard over the top return. But the Matten one th eopposite end uses a small pump which is placed behind the Matten on the front and bottom of the tank, I drilled a hole in the Matten to allow the pump to blow out across the bottom of the tank. I cannibalized a powerhead output to make this work. My goal was to create a circular flow pattern. One filter pushes the water across the surface from left to right and also serves to aerate the water by agitation. The other matte has the pump push the water from right to left near the bottom of the want. To insure there were no issues with oxygen levels I also have and airstone in the center of the tank.
I am impressed with the quality of the Poret foam and over the years have removed my ATI foams and replaced them with Poret Cubefilters- almost all 20 ppi. I even got one 5x5x10 tower filter for use in a 125 gal with other cubefilters. I have also replaced a lot of my prefilters with the 10 ppi foam.
Next, the best mechanical filtration I have seen is from the Mattenfilters. Most of what we call mechanical waste is actually biological. Inside the mattern it is broken down by critters which consume it. They are no as effective as in nature as the bigger critters in nature are not in our tanks, But the smaller ones sure are. That is why chucks go in but what is behind the Matten looks like silt. One trick I have learned with the Mattens is that when I do weekly maint. on the tanks with them I spend about 60 seconds running a hose across the front of the foam to pull off some of those entering solids. This helps a lot in extending the period between cleanings.
On balance I find the time between cleanings of my Mattens is measured in multi0le years. For the cubefilters if is more like once a months. For my ATI foams it was weekly.
I had planned to have a sump on my 125. I worked with Dr. tanner to design it. It would use all Poret foam as the media. There were to be 3 sheets the first 2 were 20 ppi and and the 3rd would be 30 ppi. The pairs of 20 ppis would remove most of the solids leaving way less of them getting caught in the 30. That would mean it would not clog so rapidly.
One last note on Matten filters. They do not need anything near the flow rates of most of the filters out there. Depending where you look, the suggested turnover rate from a Matten filter can be as low as once per hour up to about 5 times per hours. In any case, this is considerably lower than the up to 10 times an hour we have been told we need with many filters.
I will end with this observation. I have worked a lot with plecos. More than half of my tanks were dedicated to them for many years. I sold plecos to a lot of folks who bred them. One such person also made a presentation at one of my club meetings. One of the things he taught me from that was the fact that all his pictures of his breeding tanks showed somewhat smaller tanks with 3 air powered Poret cubefilters in them. These do not create the sort of flow in which many plecos live.
Most of what I worked with came from the Big bend of the Rio Xingu. AT the peak if the dry season the water temp could be pushing 90F or more. The warmed water is the less oxygen it tend to hold. But the Big Bend has a ton of rapids constantly oxygenating the water. More than flow the fish needed well oxygenated water. Those multiple air powered cubefilters provided that.
And I found myself changing my filtration. Hang-ons came off and Poert cubefilters went in. And, where I kept hang-ons, I started changing their media to Poret- 20 ppi of course.
There is one downside to using Mattenfilters and that is the amount of space needed in a tank. Not only is the foam 2-3 inches thick (normally), but then you need a space behind it of 2-3 inches. So that means from 5-6 inches of tank length is removed from use by the fish. However, all of the benefits of the Matten and Poret foam is worth it because of the superior filtration and minmaization of the maint. needed on them.
If you are not familiar with Hamburg Mattenfilters, have a read here
https://www.swisstropicals.com/library/mattenfilter/
edited for typos and spelling mistakes
