I’ve been watching a lot of YouTube videos about sumps and overflows lately – and I am contemplating replacing my Hydor canister filter with a sump. Challenge is with the stand that I built – and getting a suitable sump to fit.
As luck would have it, after adding a few new fish to the aquarium, the impeller decided to blow up. As I haven’t been able to move forward on the sump – I had to get the filtration running ASAP, so I ended up purchasing a new canister filter from the closest pet store, Petland.
The new additions to the tank included 4 more Denison barbs – these ones are pretty young and only about 1.5-2″ long right now, but are schooling great with the older ones that are about 3.5″ now. I also added 5 little Julii Cory’s to help out the 3 clown plecos (that I rarely see). I still only have the one discus – would like to add a couple more at some point.
h080, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
I would have just replaced the impeller, and I had actually been searching for one as a backup. Unfortunately I was unable to find one in town or online. It’s a shame, as the Hydor 250 has been working very well, and I had the filter cleaning process down. I might see if another brand of impeller might be suitable, or perhaps see if I can cast a new blade.
The new filter I picked up is a Fluval 406 – it’s good for up to a 100 gallon tank. In setting up the filter, I replaced the carbon pouches with more bio media – the stuff I had already in the Hydor filter, along with a bunch of the Eheim substrata sintered glass spheres.
The media boxes don’t feel as durable as the Hydor trays – the plastic feels more brittle – but we’ll see how things go.
Some of the nice features are the quick release hose assembly at the pump – will be interesting to see how well it works in a week when I give the pre filter it’s first cleaning. The other nice feature is the priming pump – while it doesn’t feel very robust, it did work very well.
The pump did not come with any sort of pre-filter for the intake, so I might look at adding one in the near future, and it also didn’t come with a spray bar. I prefer that to the included spout, which seems a little aggressive – fortunately I was able to reuse the Hydor spray bar.
During the evening a couple days ago, I noticed that it wasn’t moving any water. I promptly unplugged the filter, and shut off the valves to and from the tank. I had just cleaned the filters 3 or 4 weeks earlier, but cleaned everything again, including the impeller. I did notice that the blades spun freely of the magnetic cylinder, but I couldn’t remember if that was the way it was supposed to be, but nothing appeared broken or damaged otherwise.
