Under gravel cleaners

[Cowboy]

do under gravel cleaners work or are they just a waste of time and money? i have heard an answer to both sides and wanted a more professional point of view from ppl that aren't trying to sell it to me

[hillbillyreefer]

I've run them for about 15 years in two of my fw tanks. Both tanks have dolomite gravel over the plates. One tank is 110 gal with 2 powerheads supporting about 40 juvenile african ciclids about 800 gph turnover. The other is a 33 with about 15 inches of assorted fish in it at the moment. It has a 350gph head and another airstone powered stack running it. Both systems have worked well for years for me. I don't run any other filtration, except for seeding hob's or sponges occasionally. My WC, cleanup schedule is terrible, I do about a 10-20% water change about 1 per month. This includes a gravel syphon and refill. Tanks are generally stable. I had one go bad about 8 months ago but I'd torn it down and moved it and refilled it. Not the systems fault. I haven't run one with salt but don't know why it wouldn't work. Kinda like a sandbed, adds extra area for the goodguys to grow.

Brad

[0sprey]

For a fish-only system, UGFs work just fine. But if you want corals or other inverts, cross them off the list. They become solid nitrate factories in a fairly short timespan.
Robert Fenner's Conscientious Marine Aquarist has an excellent overview of the different types of systems, and notes in detail the benefits and disadvantages of undergravel filters. Order it in from your local library and read it. Well worth your time.

[Cowboy]

Originally Posted by 0sprey

For a fish-only system, UGFs work just fine. But if you want corals or other inverts, cross them off the list. They become solid nitrate factories in a fairly short timespan.
Robert Fenner's Conscientious Marine Aquarist has an excellent overview of the different types of systems, and notes in detail the benefits and disadvantages of undergravel filters. Order it in from your local library and read it. Well worth your time.

this is in an fresh water tank but i do have plants that i am trying to grow

[0sprey]

My bad, sorry.
I don't often recommend plants with UGFs, although I have done it in the past. UGFs force plants to spend too much time developing tiny little roots that don't absorb nutrients very well. Once the plate gets clogged there are some nice nutrient pockets for them, but by that time, the UGF isn't doing much good anymore.
What kind of plants are you planning on?

[RedneckDaveAb]

I used to have underground filters and they appear to have worked fine although in our fish club I have heard bad reviews

We now use Aquaclear filters without any problems. They are easy to clean and work well.

Hope this helps!
Dave

[PixSell]

Hi There;

I know this is an old thread but, I’m new, so here is my $0.02.

Do undergravel filters work?
Yes, absolutely!

Are there more efficient forms of biological filteration?
Yes, absolutely!

I’ve been using UG filters successfully for about 25 years on a variety of aquarium set-ups; sometimes as the sole means of filtration and sometimes with some other sort of power filter. Hang on back, canister & wet/dry trickle are, or can be set-up to be more efficient biological filters than UGFs. If you are going to have gravel in your tank anyway, you might as well have it being used to aid in the tank’s filtration.

In my opinion the LFS trade has turned away from them because they don’t make as much money on a (fully functional) UG filter as they would on a more expensive powerfilter. I recently had the owner of a LFS tell me (when I was trying to find an airlift tube for my UGF) to “get rid of that useless undergravel filter”. Well that “useless filter” had been keeping the same tank clean and the water in perfect condition for over 10 years.

I now have a 75g tank set up filtered mainly by an UGF driven by 2 powerheads. There is also a small AquaClear filter with a sponge (to catch some of the big floatie garbage) and a sock filled with peat (for Discus water quality). It’s pretty simple and it works. I have medium fine gravel on the bottom (next to the filter) and finer, coarse sand on top of that. The substrate is 3 to 4 inches deep. UGFs work better with lots of gravel.

Keeping Discus, I do, do a lot of water changing though; and vacuuming the gravel when the changes happen. The changes are 20 to 25% (sometimes more) twice a week. You have to keep the substrate fairly free of debris in order for UGF to work properly. If the UGF becomes clogged, the oxygen that the beneficial bacteria need to survive and do their job can’t get to them and they die.

That being said, a word of caution… Do not stop the flow of water (oxygen) through a UGF in an established tank. Your water quality will quickly turn toxic. If you want to stop using a UFG, tear the tank down; clean the gravel thoroughly to remove all the small decaying organic matter that is inevitably lodged in the substrate and under the filter plated by the UGF. Then put it all back together without the UGF.

I keep many plants with UGFs. I just plant them in small clay pots with a fertilizer pellet and peat in the bottom of it and some of the aquarium’s sand on top of that. Then I bury the whole pot in the aquarium’s substrate.

Hope that's somewhat useful, Chris

[jvision]

The only reason I switched out my UG filters from my planted tanks was that the roots would get tangled up in the filter plate. PixSell makes a good point - if you put the plants in pots, then you don't have to worry about the roots. However, that may impede the growth and spreading of some plants.