So what type of filtration are you running on your tank?

I have always had a knack of overfiltrating my tanks. The only freshwater tank I have running right now is my 55 planted tank and is being filtered by an Emperor 400 and a rena cannister filter. I like the ease of use on the hang-on power filters over the cannisters, but you get much more filtration from a cannister.

Before I took my 55 gal down a few weeks ago, I was running a Marineland Magnum 350 cannister and an Eheim classic cannister. I had also used a Penguin 170 bio wheel (it's really old and has issues, so I replaced it with the Eheim) Many people disparage the Marineland cannisters, but I really like the Magnum 350. I didn't like the Eheim at all though. Maintenance was a pain on that particular filter.

Emperor 400 is where the money is for a 55 gallon-ish tank. I have one on the families 54 gallon. The tank has had 0 issues, NO algae what so ever, and limited water changes.

Before that, I used a magnum 350, I still have it actually, I want to try to get it to work again, the pump isnt spinning, but it was a great filter.

Off and on I have thought about a planted tank. Most of my fish have been moved to a bigger tank, and the little 10 gal is now holding feeder guppies, that I dont have the heart to feed to the cichlids. Is a 10 gal too small to be a planted tank? and what do I need? I would like to have the pretty grass that I think someone told me as a type of moss, for starters.

10 gallons is not too small for a planted tank. You can get some smaller plants to put in there, or larger plants that are easier to cut back and still look good.
Java moss and combomba are some great starter plants that grow well without high lighting and CO2.

On my last two FW tanks I ran three fluval 305s on our 125gal, and one magnum 350 with biowheels on return on our 56gal.


The magnum was much easier to work with and ran circles around each fluval with throughput.



The fluvals on the other hand, despite making puddles half the time I disconnected them and various cheap parts snapping on occasion, had VERY convenient, reasonable capacity media storage (4 prefilter pads, then 6 individual media chambers per filter)



I cant really compare performance because they all did a great job with minimal maintenance. prior to these canister setups we ran only ran UGFs with reasonably large powerheads on everything. The last UGF setup we ran was a 44gal pentagon corner tank, and for the first 2 years it seemed to run fine, but I had to completely tear down and redo because of the sheer volume of funk the UGF had trapped. I dont like cleaning gravel weekly (or doing any other highly frequent maintenance that stresses my fish) so I only consider external forms of filtration now.

I have had more success with the aqua clear 110. I run 2 aqua clears on my 125 and 2 marineland 350 on my 90 I used to run Rena 3 and continually had problems with cavitation and flow stoppage. I have 2 bio blocks so all i use the HOB filters for is the foam filtration. Ran these for 2 months now in my discus tank with 10% water changes weekly.