My Fish Tanks

With any new aquarium set up, you going to need to have a good aquarium filter on your tank to help keep it clean. Aquarium filters not only keep your water clean but it keeps the water safe for fish to live. A good way to look at it is that your aquarium filter is the engine of your tank set up much like a car. Without an engine the car won’t run. Well if the filter doesn’t run everything else in your aquarium can fail and you could possibly lose your fish. Your filter is basically the heart of your aquarium and you need to make sure you have excellent filtration to make sure your fish have a healthy and safe home.

What Type Of Aquarium Filters Are There?
Most aquarium filters are divided into three sections: Biological, Mechanical and Chemical.

Biological. An aquarium filter is a breeding ground for two main types of bacteria. This is not something to worry about, quite the opposite. The type of bacteria that filters culture is specifically to work on the chemicals that fish produce through waste. The first type of bacteria breaks down the potentially very poisonous ammonia that fish produce into less harmful nitrites, and then a second type of bacteria breaks down the nitrites into even less harmful nitrates.

Mechanical. The filters will also remove large suspended particles of debris from the water.

Chemical. Some aquarium filters allow the addition of Active Carbon in the form of balls, sheets, wadding or crystals. The purpose of this is to remove medications and heavy metal traces from the water.

Aquarium filters come in several different forms, from Under-gravel filter trays, through Hang-on-back (HOB) filters and internal power-head filters to external “Sump” filters. All of them do very similar jobs and all work well. The main criterion for choosing which filter is best is the size of the tank and the load you are going to put it under. Let’s take them one at a time and explain the benefits and drawbacks for each. I’ll start with the cheapest and work upwards in cost:

For aquariums there are basically 3 types of aquarium filters you can choose from:

1. Outside Power Filters
2. Undergravel Filters
3. Canister Filters

Each of these above mentioned aquarium filtration systems all work great and each has there own unique advantages.