Att Small Tank Owners

[zig]

Dont know if this is worthy of a thread, well auctually it is worthy of a thread IMO, i had been looking for ages for a suitable external filter for a small Juwel Reckord tank that i have, the tank is 24x12x12 and holds only 54 litres or 14 US gallons, i had looked at Eheim eccos, Fluval 104s and an Eheim 2213, they all would have done the job but each had a compromise of some sort, the eccos are not great filters by all accounts, the flow rates of the fluval 104 and the eheim 2213 were more than i wanted, in the end i came down to the 2213 and ordered it, anyway about an hour later i cancelled the order because i found another filter instead.

To my surprise i came across an Eheim 2211 for sale in an online shop in Germany, now this filter was perfect, i had read about these but i knew they had stopped making them some time ago so were not available, these filters are the smallest cannister filter in the eheim range made especially for small tanks but eheim had stopped production some time ago in the hope we would all buy the eheim eccos, so that didnt work and they have now reintroduced the eheim 2211 again..........so thats the good news.....

Anyway its a fantastic filter i would highly recommend it, in the end i bought the filter from HERE and it was really cheap, including postage media for the filter and CO2 hosing i paid 55 euro (about £38 pounds sterling) but if you had spare media you could save some money there, you need media for the filter it only comes with 2 sponges, the top fine sponge and another coarser one. Its feasable you could buy the filter and include the postage for £30 sterling if you had your own media, which in my book is a bargain, its the best piece of kit i have bought in ages and am really happy with it.

The filter is not yet widely available, only 3 online shops have it in stock the one i linked is the cheapest if you include the postage, 2 of the shops are in Germany and the other is in Holland, it might be a while before its available in the UK as eheim roll out its reintroduction.

Anyway if you have a small tank grab yourself a great external filter post took about 10 days but it was worth the wait, ive had mine up and running over a week now.

 

[George Farmer]

Dont know if this is worthy of a thread

Very worthy I would say.

Thanks for sharing mate, I'm sure others will benefit from this.

 

[Bloo]

Very interesting I never knew there as this smaller external filter available.
I'll keep that in mind.....

 

[Themuleous]

Zig,

You never fail to amaze, that's exactly what I'm looking for! Cheers buddy

One question thou, how small an aquarium do you think it would be safe to go to? My new nano is going to be around 24lt, a bit small maybe?

Sam

 

[George Farmer]

I imagine it will have adjustable flow? If not you can always drill more/bigger holes in the spray bar.

 

[Themuleous]

Good point, will give it a try.

S

 

[danski]

Great to hear. By the way my new eheim 2213 should be shipped out to me today.

 

[zig]

Sam

None of the eheim classic series filters have adjustable flow, its usually a case with these filters of positioning the spraybar correctly, usually you point the spraybar at the back wall of the tank rather than into the tank itself and this reduces the flow significiently or you can as suggested drill out the holes in the spraybar a bit bigger and this dissapates the flow or do both.

You might be stretching it a bit putting this filter on a nano tank bear in mind 24 litres is only 6 US gallons, you might get away with it though its very hard to tell, i was going to suggest in the opening post that i thought this filter was probably ideally suited for tanks between maybe 10 to 20 US gallons, 10 being the lowest limit IMO if you modified the spraybar after that it may be a bit too much.

Personally i think the flow would be too but there again if you had £30 quid to spare you could allways do guinea pig and report back i guess

Naw im not sure if i would go for it, see what replys you get in your other thread maybe the best thing to do for now.

 

[Themuleous]

Woops )

Got a bit too excited and ordered one! Doh! Oh well I have 50lt that has an internal at the mo, so I can always chuck it on that one if my poor little fishes dont like it! Will see what happens.

Cheers anyway thou. Will let you know how I get on.

Sam

 

[danski]

zig should i be pointing the spraybay back against the glass in my tank when it arrives? So basically im just reversing it and turning it to point right at the glass?

 

[zig]

zig should i be pointing the spraybay back against the glass in my tank when it arrives? So basically im just reversing it and turning it to point right at the glass?

Dan, i dont think you will need to do that, i would just set it up as normal and see how it goes, i usually position my spraybar on either end of the tank and point it at about 45 degrees into the middle somewhere, i usually have the intake at the opposite end, if i thought there was to much flow i would start by widening a couple of holes on the sparybar and then try it again, still to much, then widen a couple more and so on, you could end up widening all of them and even adding a couple more, this will help a lot, but i think on a 29 gallon you will not have to do this, the filter should be just right for the tank without any adjustments, im really happy with my 2215 on my 40 gallon and thatss the next filter up in that range so im sure the 2213 will be perfect for the 29 gallon. Good choice mine sits on a piece of carpet and i had to check it when i got it to make sure it was working because it was so quiet.

When you get the filter fill it up with water, seed it from the old filter etc (it wont fill properly until you open one of the taps, when its full close the tap again) and hook it up to the other parts you have allready setup, intake and spraybar should be in position, you will have to suck on the spraybar side of the filter to prime it, this is the only time you will ever have to do this, in futher you will be able to use the double connectings taps to release the filter to do maintainence and just hook it back up and switch it back on when finiished. I clean mine every 2 months.

 

[danski]

thanks a million..........dan

 

[Themuleous]

Personally i think the flow would be too but there again if you had £30 quid to spare you could allways do guinea pig and report back i guess

All who care - I'm reporting back

Have the 2211 up and running in my 24lt tank and it's working a treat. I haven't put the stopper in the end of the spray bar and have directed the outflow about 1cm away from the glass to keep the flow down, which seems to stop the water from flowing round the tank at a rate of knots. Its also about 120cm from the top of the filter to the water line in the tank which prob keeps the flow down and over works the motor too probably will be moving the tank lower soon so will see if it makes a difference.


The intake strainer also stops my little dwarf rasboras from getting sucked up too, so should be ok for other small fish, but probably not fry.

My research also found these, reckon they could be used to reduce the flow if necessary. Will prob add some to mine just to help with detaching it when it needs a clean.

One last point, if you do get one of these order some more filter pads as I has to convert (that means hack to pieces!) some much larger foam and ended up wasting lots.

I'll stop there, as its not strictly a plant thread.

Not sure if anyone will find this in the least bit interesting, but here you go all the same! A great little external filter, that works just as well on small tanks.

Sam

 

[zig]

Glad your happy with it

Im still really happy with mine definatly a good buy, i thought i mentioned the extra media, just as tip for others the sponges from a Juwel reckord 60 filter fit exactly inside the 2211 filter with no modifications at all, just squeeze them in.

What you need is the double tap connectors, i need to buy those as well, but they are so expensive compared to the filter anyway i will get around to that eventually, i wont need to clean it for a while anyway, but not an impossible task to remove the filter without the connectors, just messy.

 

[Themuleous]

Oh c**p wish I'd known about the Juwel filter stuff first! Oh well Ive got loads of sponge in there now so thats all that matters, as you say will be ages before it needs cleaning.

And you're right one of these double tap connectors for each pipie is going to cost almost as much filter!

Sam