Hello Everyone, NEWBIE

[Firstman]

I am new to this forum howdy, anyway I am fishless cycling a 20 gallon tank, and I have recently put in 5 plants, I am now hearing that I should not use an UGF w/ plants but no one has given any reasoning behind their opinions , so I would like to ask the good people of this forum to please help me with any advice to this problem. I would like to find out if I need to take out my UGF so that I may go ahead and do so. Thank you in advance.

 

[Alien Anna]

The reason is that the plant roots will block the flow of water through the UGF and render it ineffective. Also, the UGF will take nutrients away from the plant roots and starve the plants. Plants and their roots can make cleaning the gravel of a UGF (which you have to do to keep it clear and free-flowing), very difficult.

Other disadvantages to UGFs are that they are difficult to clean even without plants, they need a lot of cleaning because unlike other filters, the dirt is in plain sight, they are quickly rendered ineffective by digging fish or tank ornaments on top of the gravel and they are very poor at removing particulate waste from the water.

However, there are ways around it, particularly if your UGF is just one method of filtration in your tank. You can put plants in pots (very effective and easy) and you can have plants on bogwood (Java fern, Java moss, anubias). For a second filter you can have a cheap and cheerful sponge filter running off an air-pump.

If you got fed up of the UGF but already owned a powerhead, its a simple job to run a sponge or box filter off the powerhead instead or, or as well as the UGF, so nothing is wasted.

 

[Firstman]

Alien Anna, thank you so much for your input, I think that I will remove my UGF tonight and mix my gravel with sand and attach the box filter that came with my Powersweep Powerhead. I really dont need the UGF i guess because I also have a Duello 100 filter as well, so with the filtration and water circulation along with the fact that I have ornaments and plants rendering the UGF useless, I don't need it. If anyone sees something wrong with this idea, please let me know. Thank you again ALIEN ANNA.

 

[Inchworm]

Hello Firstman and welcome to the forum

I'm glad you've gotten an answer to your problem so quickly. Now, I hope you stay around and talk fish with us. There are lots of friendly people here who would like to get to know you.

 

[denbob]

Hello Firstman, I am also new to the fish world but I read some there that you could use your u g f in inverse direction to feed the plants and keep the gravel clean, can any members verify this
denbob

 

[aquamanis]

Hi Firstman and welcome to the forum. Denbob is right about reversing the UGF so the water flows up and out through the substrate. Have a look at this article:Potplants and UGFs

 

[Firstman]

Thank you everyone for all your help. INCHWORM I will definitely be around the forums alot, so we will be talking fish in the future, and thanks for the warm welcome. Talk to all of you later. God Bless.