been long term comparing under gravel to non under gravel filters...

[Magnum Man]

the curmudgeon in me wants to find the under gravel filtered tanks, more stable, but in side by side comparisons with both tank styles having mechanical filtration ( I mostly use hang on back ), I'm really not seeing a difference in tank function and stability between tanks with under gravel plates, and tanks with no under gravel plates... I find having rooted terrestrial plants in the tank, more stabilizing, than the various filter types... I also have several tanks with only sponge filters, and am not seeing any practical differences in the various filter styles... seems they all do what is needed to maintain quality water long term, provided "normal" water changes are performed

what has been your experience???

 

[GaryE]

I'm experimenting with home made undergravels. Just because the hobby ditched them doesn't mean they aren't good. I used to be able to breed difficult fish with UG filters in the tanks, including good sized Satanoperca.

I can't provide readings as data to back what I'm doing up, because I don't use test kits. Yes, I could if I wanted serious testing, but I'm dabbling with these filters. I see the UGs working very well. But I generally water change a lot. Right now, with wildfires around and a drought, I'm voluntarily reducing water use to keep the reservoirs topped up in case of need. So my filtration is even more essential. I'm going to every second week/14 day water change intervals.

Because I have no hang on the back flow, and I don't have extra canisters, I use these filters to run shallow tanks to breed fish that won't breed at depth. So a 10 gallon will run with 5 gallons max and these filters. They have held in well for that function.

I also made a large UG for a 40 gallon, with a powerhead, and it is also good. I have bubblenests from Microctenopoma in that tank, so the water's good.

Any serious experiment would involve water testing and controls, and I'm not into that degree of detail. I'll leave that to others.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

My very first tank was over filtered because I had a UGF and an Emperor 400 with bio-wheels on a 45 gal. tank. The one thing I got right was the depth and size of the gravel I used for the UGF. Then I learned about RUGFs and I changed over to doing things that way. I went from using air power to using a reverse flow powerhead to run the RUGF.

Imo, an RUGF is the way to go. But to get the best results we should also have a hamg-on whose job is to remove the solids from the water. Because of the reverse flow, as debris starts to sink towards the substrate, the reverse flow keeps particles from being sucked into the gravel and instead keeps them suspended in the water for the most part. A hang-on loaded prinarily for "mechancal" filtration removes a lot of that. Without the secondary filtration the water witht he solids will be sucked into the intake and wind up in the substrtae as the water is pushed up through the gravel.

The down side to any form of UGF is that the 3 inches of gravel reduces the water volume in a tank as well as the open area that would normally exist without all the UGF gravel. However, there is no better bio-filtration possible as the amount of microoganisms that can colonize the gravel is much more than any other form of fiilter with the exception, maybe, of a Mattenfilter with a high quality foam such as Poret.

When I discovered live swordtail and panda cory fry under the RUGF plate, that was the end of my RUGF days.

 

[Magnum Man]

I only ever did a reverse flow, on a salt water fish tank, and no mechanical filter, which you need, to remove the waste, in mine, it floated around, so it was a short experiment, that would have had a better outcome, with some sort of mechanical filtration

 

[fishorama]

I wish I had tried RUGF back in our UGF days, But now I have too many plant roots to clog the plates. I mostly use HOBs but have some canister filters I'd like to use again.

 

[GaryE]

It's funny how the timing of threads people post can be dead on. Yesterday, I bought four perfectly intact used 1970s-80s powerheads, and a brown, ancient Aquaclear 70 (then 1200). This is aquarium museum stuff, but so am I. It was cheap and the kid selling it had his heart in the right place. He'd overpaid for them in a garage sale. They'd been boxed up in a barn for decades after the death of the garage sale family's father, who must have been a very serious aquarist back in the day. The kid bought a bunch of tanks and gear and was selling the surplus to break even on the deal.

There were UG plates but no lifts, and they looked a bit too old as plastic goes. I left them behind. But all the probably 50 year old pumps and filters still work. I might take my homemade UGs that run on air and go with the smaller powerheads to get things done.

 

[plebian]

I use two 18" x 36" home-built UGFs using slotted acrylic sheets, one on each end of a 9' L-shaped 180 gallon tank. Each one is covered with 2" of 3mm quartz gravel and powered by a 900L/hour powerhead.

Originally I used two 20 liter canister filters filled with 30 ppi foam, but became disenchanted when one of them began leaking. After replacing the canisters with the UGFs water clarity improved noticeably. They've been operating for over one year and I've never cleaned them. The canisters required cleaning every 6 months. Truth be told, I don't expect cleaning to be required for several more years, if at all. I've heard from reputable sources that have used them for over 10 years without cleaning.

Excluding labor, the UGFs cost me less than 1/3 the cost of the canisters, and when the powerheads need replacing they're less than 1/10th the cost of a canister motor.

 

[Mike55]

It's funny how the timing of threads people post can be dead on. Yesterday, I bought four perfectly intact used 1970s-80s powerheads, and a brown, ancient Aquaclear 70 (then 1200). This is aquarium museum stuff, but so am I. It was cheap and the kid selling it had his heart in the right place. He'd overpaid for them in a garage sale. They'd been boxed up in a barn for decades after the death of the garage sale family's father, who must have been a very serious aquarist back in the day. The kid bought a bunch of tanks and gear and was selling the surplus to break even on the deal.

There were UG plates but no lifts, and they looked a bit too old as plastic goes. I left them behind. But all the probably 50 year old pumps and filters still work. I might take my homemade UGs that run on air and go with the smaller powerheads to get things done.

The real aquarium museum pieces would be anything made by Metaframe or Supreme. I forgot who made the Maxiflow . Somebody out there should remember.

 

[GaryE]

My advantage in this is I don't have a museum - all of these pieces of equipment are now running.

I was quite surprised when I went online out of idle curiosity to see if undergravel filter plates were still made and sold. There were a couple of models available. They're overpriced for what they are, but not overpriced for what the cost of almost everything is.

My interest in them isn't nostalgia for old tech - it ties into the idea that we need tech for very specific applications. UG filters did a very good job, and still work well for shallow tanks. I'm going to make myself a pair of tanks after a trip to IKEA for glass at the end of the month, and I've been looking around for options on how to run them. They'll be around 25 gallons, close to 30 inch tanks for African fish, and I think one of the non digging stream species will get a UG using one of these old pumps.

As far as testing them goes, they worked extremely well. I think a good part of what destroyed them was the fish we kept right around when power filters took over. I know I scrapped my UG filters when mbuna became available. That explosion of interest in the Cichlid diversity of the eastern African Great Lakes brought some serious digging fish into the hobby. We forget that there was a time when most 'really into it' aquarium keepers were in the Cichlid hobby, because of the diversity, challenges and 'newness' of the species appearing in the trade. Cichlids have a good folllowing still, but nothing like they did in the 1985 to 2000 period.

And Cichlids, whether from African lakes, rivers or streams, South America, Central and North America - wrecked UG filters by moving gravel.

Most aquarium filters work. People were inventive in the past. I run corner box filters, modified as far as media goes for lightly stocked killie tanks, sponge filters of various types, HOB filters from several brands, canisters, undergravel set ups and plant filters. I could try matten filters, wet dry tech (I used to have a few, and they were good), or sumps. We have a lot of options, especially if we have a DIY angle on fishkeeping. I have a large fishroom to have all these toys, but we can pick and choose from a wide range of clever ideas people have had.

 

[Magnum Man]

my dozen or so 30 - 65 gallon tanks, I began restarting 3 years ago, all had the good undergravel filters, from the 80's I was disappointed they had fallen so far from grace, when I began restarting them... I assumed newer was better, and I removed all but 2 of them... the only real problem with was on most of them the risers tubes were brittle, and cracked or broken... on the 2-55 gallons that I'm still running UG filters, I was able to get enough riser tubes for 2 risers per tank, out of all my parts... one tank runs 2 power heads, and one I inserted 4 inch air stone in each of the risers... both have been working well...

I still have all the filter plates, in storage, and expect at some point, I'll take the time to find some new riser tubes of the proper size... on the 55 gallon plates, they split them in half, and ran 2 plates , but on the 36 inch tanks, they were full sized one piece plates, with the 65 gallon, the plate was 36 inches by 24 inches... the community tanks set up without UG's, will likely never get them back, and are running fine without them ( 2 now have sand, which I never ran before, because of the UG filters ) but I'd like to redo my 65 gallon, at some point, and may like to put that one back in

 

[Magnum Man]

I need to put a caliper on the outlets, to insure getting the proper sized tubes... all my old tubes were super thin, which is why they got so brittle... going with thicker tubes, with the correct ID is only half the battle, as the tops usually fit over the outside of the tube, and then would not fit, with a thicker tube... I don't 3D print, but would think in this age, finding a top piece for a thicker tube would be possible , of course if everything had a power head, there is no need for the top piece... but they work ( ed) just as well with air...