noob power head question

[scotty82]

As the title says I'm a noob and have a question on which powerhead would be best for what I'm looking for. Here's what I have going on. A 10 gal shrimp tank with a couple plants but mostly mosses. I want just a sponge filter with a powerhead to run it. It's in the living room so I don't want to use an air pump because of the noise. So what would you recommend for the sponge/powerhead? All I've ever dealt with is hob and canisters.

[slavecorps]

An aquaclear 20 powerhead would probably work well for you. They make prefilter sponges to fit the input of the aquaclear powerheads. The powerhead does about 126 gph without the sponge, so it should be perfect with the prefilter attatchment.

I think the flow on these can be dialed back also.

[scotty82]

Cool, I was just looking at those on Amazon. Another dumb question about these. Does the sponge with a powerhead have the same good bacteria as the ones that are air driven? Because doesn't the bacteria need O2? Or is the powerhead sponge just a mechanical filter?

[slavecorps]

The sponge will develop bacteria, but if you clean the sponge with tap water, you will wipe out the bacteria. It's more for just mechanical filtraton. For shrimp, you might be better off using the small aquaclear HOB with a sponge over the intake.

[scotty82]

I have a hob on the tank now. It's a marineland biowheel 100, without a sponge. I looked for a sponge but didn't find one that was for that hob. I was kinda wanting to go sponge filter to get rid of the ugly hob.

[slavecorps]

Personally, I think a single tube from a HOB looks better than a pump and sponge assembly in a tank. With the right HOB you also have the benefit of biological, mechanical, and chemical filtration while obest xygenating the water. Biological filtration is important for shrimp and you won't achieve that with a powerhead. The flow through the sponge is too fast and the sponge will likely clog before any significant amount of bacteria are able to colonize it. The best bet for a sponge only filter is an air driven sponge filter because the oxygen from the air and slow flow through the sponge encourages bacterial growth. The drawback is that air pumps are obnoxiously noisy.

[PlantedRich]

I have a different view of this question. I think the O2 will not be from the airflow but IN the water. That is why it is important to have enough current to stir the bottom water to the surface where the gas exchange takes place. The water pulled through the media of any type will contain enough o2 for bacteria to grow. If it required air itself, canister filters would not be the great bio filters most are considered to be.

For spong, it is not necessary to have a ready made spong. Just about any spong media can be made to fit over any intake to the powerhead. Some will be much better as far as overall results. Too fine spong stops up too quick while too course will not do as well filtering small debris. Much depends on what you want it to do in YOUR tank. I find buying the spong for Aquaclear media and cutting a slit to fit it over the intake works well for me. They have the pore size down pretty well. Kind of like they know something about filters, huh?

To preserve the bacteria when rinsing the spong, do it in moderate temperature water without chlorine. Old tank water is good. Just rinse, don't scrub the heck out of it and the bacteria will hang on while you do. Also keep in mind that the good bacteria is not just in the filter but almost anywhere in the tank. The media holds a lot because it is designed to have lots of tiny spaces where bacteria can hang out. But the tank wall is also open for hanging out.

[scotty82]

Thanks for all the help here. Well, if a sponge filter with a power head isn't going to work for what I want, how about a tiny canister filter? I've read a couple places and have seen some canisters for smaller 10-15gal tanks. Money isn't an issue here, it's for a 10 gal I don't think the things will be no 100 bucks or anything. I know the hob work great, but I'm just not a fan of having them in my tank. At least with the sponge filter I can hide it in a back corner. The hob has to take up so much space on the back of the tank.

And for some dumb reason, I never thought about just buying a regular sponge and cutting it to fit. Genius.

[slavecorps]

Yes, a canister will also work. With whatever method of filtration you choose, just make sure you are breaking the surface tension of the water for oxygenation and that you have an adequate method of biological filtration.

[PlantedRich]

For a small tank where you want real quiet, a small canister is great. I love the Eheim 2213 as it gives lots of media where tons of bacteria will grow and the pump is strong enough not to bog down when it gets a bit dirty. I use a penlight to look through the canister sides to see what dirt has collected. I get a couple months between cleanings on most of my Eheims. For small growout tanks I'm liking the small internal filters that are easy to clean. They often pull water in near the bottom and shoot it out near the surface to give good water movement. I use the "elcheapo" ($15) from Wal-mart rather than powerhead filters as I find having the media right at the top makes it easy to snag out to rinse rather than reaching into the tank to get the spong off the powerhead. Just small points that each of us may like better--- or not.