Fluval or Eheim?

[Sasha the breen]

I am now buying a new external filter and was wondering what one you'd recommend.
Fluval 204=£57.99
Eheim Pro 2222=£61.oo
but the only thing i was wondering about if the filter media and how expensive it is?How much more expensive is filter media thats eheim from fluval filter media.I need to include that in your opinion the price of filter media because im only 13 and i dont have limitless money

 

[Lateral Line]

Eheim.

Depends on what media you want, you can use the same media in both normally.

 

[njparton]

I have a Fluval 104 and an Eheim Ecco 2231.

The Fluval is cheaper to buy and has more readily available filter media, but is slightly more noisy, has poorly fitting internal compartments (don't seal against by-pass flows very well) and the corregated tubing gunks up very easily.

The Eheim was slightly more expensive and I've never seen replacement media on sale, but it is a bit quieter and a better made.

Go for the Eheim, but the Fluval won't be such a bad choice

 

[maestro]

definately the eheim, you dont have to buy media for the specific filter buy any aslong as it does teh job, the eheims a higher quaility product though, ive had one for 10 years and it still looks like new

 

[maestro]

forgot to say that wouldnt a 204 be a bit large for ur tank, the filter will be bigger than the tank

 

[Sasha the breen]

i was wondering does it have to be specific eheim filter media or can you use fluval media for it instead?

 

[njparton]

forgot to say that wouldnt a 204 be a bit large for ur tank, the filter will be bigger than the tank

That's a good point - a 104 would easily do the job

 

[thecichlidaddict]

i was wondering does it have to be specific eheim filter media or can you use fluval media for it instead?

You can use any media that fits.

 

[Adrinal]

I don't have fluval. I switched to Eheim from Mags.
It is just an empty can in there (green empty can so does not grow crud... nice_.
It just has bottom and top plates for nice flow.

So:
Media, put what you want in there. For example I am curing some Live Rock atm so I took 1/4 pound or so of reef carbon and stuffed it in my moms old nylon socks (have a whole bag of ladys old nylons). nylons are great because they will fit right to the size of your can with whatever you put in it.

Example
bottom plate
filter screen
nylon bag of Ehiem donut rocks? forgot the name of those things.
filter screen
nylon bag of carbon
filter screen (smaller type)
nylon bag of amonia carbon stuff or bio balls or whatever is your deal)
cover plate
when it comes to cleaning this stuff the nylon bags are easy to pick up and rinse and put back in or chuck away. So start bugging the women in your family to save ruined but unsoiled socks


IMO if I was to do a can I would NOT put filter crap in there. just put a few nylon bags of those donut things. Get or DYI a good prefilter that is easy to remove from the tank and rinse oten. I would rather do the mechanical filteration where I can reach it and let the biological filteration happen in the can (where I don't have to clean it). I do heavy prefiltering and after one year my can was clean as a whistle. When I rinsed it out NO detrius was visable.

....
Recently I took down my sick tank for moving stuff around. I took the 20 buck penguin 170? and put it on the back of the main tank. Now I just leave it there. the cool thing is if I needed to set up the sick tank it will still have most of the good bacteria in it. Also it makes a nice place to add charcole if needed. (I have never needed it ... but hey you never know when some kid (not that I have one) will dump some toxin in there... any how, you get the point right... fault tolerance.
(I keep a spare $8 10g under the stand).

HTH