Aquaclear powerhead for shrimp only tank

[Jonimusha]

I'm not sure if this is an already well known fact in the community, but I just wanted to give everyone a word of caution regarding the use of Aquaclear powerheads with shrimp.

I have a sponge filter in my 10G shrimp-only tank and didn't want to run it with an air pump (bubbles + CO2 outgassing = no thanks), so I decided to power it with an AC powerhead (inlet strainer connected to uplift tube on the sponge). I thought everything was working fine for a few weeks until I noticed that I wasn't finding any baby shrimp in the tank (there were definitely some berried shrimp prior to this). So I go to take a closer look at everything in the tank yesterday and see a little shrimp tail lodged in the bottom of the powerhead. It turns out that the flow control knob on the powerhead leaves an open slit leading to the impeller chamber that creates a strong enough flow to suck in small shrimp. Long story short: I'm out of who-knows-how-many shrimp, back to my air-driven sponge, and in need of a new filter.

So be careful to check for areas of unwanted H2O intake when using the AC powerheads (or any other filtration equipment for that matter).

[Ricky]

Thanks for the tip Sorry to hear about your accident.

I was wondering if the airpump you use silent or does it make humming noises? If silent what brand is it and model?