eecclest
New Member
Hello,
This is my first time posting on this forum. I've read a lot of the topics, but didn't see too much on the Eheim Liberty series, so I thought I would share my experiences.
Anyway, I recently sold my 60-gallon tank that was equipped with two Penguin 170s and set up a 25 gallon tank. I ended up buying an Eheim Liberty 200 for this tank. The main reasons were price and general reputation of Eheim equipment. Also, I read the reviews at cloudytanks.com for additional information.
I bought the filter at PetSmart. I found them on the shelves of my local PetSmart, and they have them on their website too. They obviously aren't selling too well (if the layer of dust on the 4 boxes they had was any indication). Also, they do not (and as far as the store clerk knew, have no intention to) stock the replacement cartridges. Luckily, the independent LFS near my house stocks all the replacement cartridges, including the kind that doesn't come standard with the filter (the bio foam cartridge). So basically, if you are considering getting this filter because of the great PetSmart price ($27.99 for a Liberty 200), you had better find a source for the replacement cartridges, because you know what will happen: you'll forget to mail order them when you've used your last one, and then you'll be out when it's time to replace. And you will go through the carbon cartridges at a fairly good rate.
Here are my observations:
- Initially, the cartridges all had a tendency to float in the filter box, pushing up at the lid. This eventually went away when, as the tank got established, the usual layer of bio-crap was deposited on the internal surfaces of the filter box. Also, it probably takes a little while for all that foam and junk to get all nice and conditioned (hydrophillic for you surface chemists out there).
- The filter is quiet. Very little trickle noise, and minimal mechanical pump noise. Certainly more quiet than the Penguins I had, especially in the area of water noise.
- The flow rate adjustment is adequate. It's a little red knob on the front of the unit, pointing down is low flow and up is high flow. There is not a lot of fine tuning between the settings; it's basically high flow or low flow despite there being a half a turn between the two, but who cares. I want good flow under normal conditions and low flow when feeding, which is accomplished very well by this filter.
- The first of the carbonized filter cartridges lasted all of about a week. Could have stretched it a few more days, but didn't bother, as I was cycling the tank and wanted to get rid of the accumulated waste anyway. The second carbonized cartridge lasted longer. After two weeks, I rinsed it and put it back in service. The directions indicate that it should be replaced every 2 to 4 weeks. That's probably an accurate estimate of the useful life of these things. This may irritate those who don't like to continually buy disposable cartridges (or disposable anything for that matter).
- I bought a pair of the bio foam cartridges. These don't come with the unit. I have my filter set up in one of the suggested arrangements: one side has filter foam followed by bio foam, and the other side has carbonized filter followed by filter foam (see my next point for further comments on this). They claim these bio foam cartridges give all kinds of extra bio filtration capacity beyond that of the standard filter foam cartridges. I have no way of measuring this.
- Finally, I'm wondering why they designed this system such that the filter foam cartridge cannot be upstream of the carbonized filter cartridge? The flow pattern would not be optimal for this arrangement, and to prevent you from arranging the cartridges this way, Eheim added some little tabs that are incompatible with the carbon cartridge in the outermost position. To me, it seems more logical to have the carbonized filter do its primary job of adsorbing undesired dissolved species while letting the thick filter foam do the mechanical (and biological) filtration. The filter foam is obviously coarser, so the carbonized filter would still gunk up with small particles, but I'm sure it wouldn't blind off as quickly. As Eheim designed this thing, the carbonized cartridge is taking all the mechanical filtration load, which is probably limiting its ability to do chemical adsorption, the whole purpose of activated carbon. If anyone could clarify why Eheim designed the Liberty system this way, I'd love to hear it. Unfortunately, you can't defeat this design flaw (it's a flaw in my mind, anyway) because even if you cut off the tabs that prevent you from arranging filter foam first followed by the carbon filter, a large portion of water would bypass around the carbon and simply return to the tank. You would still get some chemical filtration, but not 100% flow through the carbon filter. A pouch of activated carbon in place of the carbonized cartridges would work better on the downstream side of the filter foam.
I hope these thoughts are helpful to anyone considering the Eheim Liberty filter system. In general, I'm not dissatisfied with the filter. I believe there are some aspects of the filter design that leave a little to be desired. Would I buy one again? Possibly. I think the Liberty is on par with the old stand-by Tetra Whisper for this size of a hang-on-tank type filter. If I had it to do over again, it would be a toss up between the two (as it was this time).
Appreciate any comments/feedback on this review.
Regards,
Eric E
This is my first time posting on this forum. I've read a lot of the topics, but didn't see too much on the Eheim Liberty series, so I thought I would share my experiences.
Anyway, I recently sold my 60-gallon tank that was equipped with two Penguin 170s and set up a 25 gallon tank. I ended up buying an Eheim Liberty 200 for this tank. The main reasons were price and general reputation of Eheim equipment. Also, I read the reviews at cloudytanks.com for additional information.
I bought the filter at PetSmart. I found them on the shelves of my local PetSmart, and they have them on their website too. They obviously aren't selling too well (if the layer of dust on the 4 boxes they had was any indication). Also, they do not (and as far as the store clerk knew, have no intention to) stock the replacement cartridges. Luckily, the independent LFS near my house stocks all the replacement cartridges, including the kind that doesn't come standard with the filter (the bio foam cartridge). So basically, if you are considering getting this filter because of the great PetSmart price ($27.99 for a Liberty 200), you had better find a source for the replacement cartridges, because you know what will happen: you'll forget to mail order them when you've used your last one, and then you'll be out when it's time to replace. And you will go through the carbon cartridges at a fairly good rate.
Here are my observations:
- Initially, the cartridges all had a tendency to float in the filter box, pushing up at the lid. This eventually went away when, as the tank got established, the usual layer of bio-crap was deposited on the internal surfaces of the filter box. Also, it probably takes a little while for all that foam and junk to get all nice and conditioned (hydrophillic for you surface chemists out there).
- The filter is quiet. Very little trickle noise, and minimal mechanical pump noise. Certainly more quiet than the Penguins I had, especially in the area of water noise.
- The flow rate adjustment is adequate. It's a little red knob on the front of the unit, pointing down is low flow and up is high flow. There is not a lot of fine tuning between the settings; it's basically high flow or low flow despite there being a half a turn between the two, but who cares. I want good flow under normal conditions and low flow when feeding, which is accomplished very well by this filter.
- The first of the carbonized filter cartridges lasted all of about a week. Could have stretched it a few more days, but didn't bother, as I was cycling the tank and wanted to get rid of the accumulated waste anyway. The second carbonized cartridge lasted longer. After two weeks, I rinsed it and put it back in service. The directions indicate that it should be replaced every 2 to 4 weeks. That's probably an accurate estimate of the useful life of these things. This may irritate those who don't like to continually buy disposable cartridges (or disposable anything for that matter).
- I bought a pair of the bio foam cartridges. These don't come with the unit. I have my filter set up in one of the suggested arrangements: one side has filter foam followed by bio foam, and the other side has carbonized filter followed by filter foam (see my next point for further comments on this). They claim these bio foam cartridges give all kinds of extra bio filtration capacity beyond that of the standard filter foam cartridges. I have no way of measuring this.
- Finally, I'm wondering why they designed this system such that the filter foam cartridge cannot be upstream of the carbonized filter cartridge? The flow pattern would not be optimal for this arrangement, and to prevent you from arranging the cartridges this way, Eheim added some little tabs that are incompatible with the carbon cartridge in the outermost position. To me, it seems more logical to have the carbonized filter do its primary job of adsorbing undesired dissolved species while letting the thick filter foam do the mechanical (and biological) filtration. The filter foam is obviously coarser, so the carbonized filter would still gunk up with small particles, but I'm sure it wouldn't blind off as quickly. As Eheim designed this thing, the carbonized cartridge is taking all the mechanical filtration load, which is probably limiting its ability to do chemical adsorption, the whole purpose of activated carbon. If anyone could clarify why Eheim designed the Liberty system this way, I'd love to hear it. Unfortunately, you can't defeat this design flaw (it's a flaw in my mind, anyway) because even if you cut off the tabs that prevent you from arranging filter foam first followed by the carbon filter, a large portion of water would bypass around the carbon and simply return to the tank. You would still get some chemical filtration, but not 100% flow through the carbon filter. A pouch of activated carbon in place of the carbonized cartridges would work better on the downstream side of the filter foam.
I hope these thoughts are helpful to anyone considering the Eheim Liberty filter system. In general, I'm not dissatisfied with the filter. I believe there are some aspects of the filter design that leave a little to be desired. Would I buy one again? Possibly. I think the Liberty is on par with the old stand-by Tetra Whisper for this size of a hang-on-tank type filter. If I had it to do over again, it would be a toss up between the two (as it was this time).
Appreciate any comments/feedback on this review.
Regards,
Eric E
