[Church]

Happy New Year to everyone!

I just got one of those 6.6 gallon bookshelf aquariums from Petco, for my girlfriend. It's a great looking tank, and I can't wait to set it up, but I'm not too sure about the HOB that came with it. Does anyone have any experience with these things? They look cool, but the filter compartment looks hokey, as does the actual carbon cartridge. I'm thinking of shoving some floss in there, but I don't know, we might just go buy an aquaclear.

Any thoughts on these things? Thanks.

 

[mott]

Get an AC, mine broke within the first 4 months.

 

[Chrisinator]

Id get an AC 20. Plenty of filtration.

 

[Church]

Alright, thanks guys. Anyone else? Anything about the actual filter itself?

 

[stpeteplanter]

Is it a 'Top fin' filter? It might not have the topfin branding on it, but does it look like this:

If so they're okay but not great. I had one on my last 55g and it did the job and didn't break, but it was never fever powerful. The filter is kinda hokey, so I always stuff a few micron pads behind it.

 

[Church]

No, it doesn't have a brand name on it that I can see. I'm sure it's "Petco" brand. It is clear-colored, like the red sea nano filters, but it is obviously much bigger. I cut out a piece of floss to fit the compartment, then fired it up and let it run while I went out for the evening. When I came back, I noticed the HOB is leaking from a seam. Not like I expected great things, but leaking is unacceptable.

I'm going to attempt to go back to Petco again today and talk to a manager. I'm going to say that I feel like I was duped, and now that I've got the tank setup and have a fish in it (not true, but they don't need to know that) I feel compelled to purchase a separate filter, and I thought I was buying a kit that had everything I need. Basically I'm going to ask for like a 20% refund, so I can purchase an aquaclear HOB with it. If they fight it, I will simply ask for an entire refund, so that NO ONE wins. (Hopefully they won't call my bluff).

On the plus side of things, the tank itself looks great! I really dig this tank a lot. Like other people have said around the Net, while reviewing this tank, it's basically like a scaled-down 20 long. So yeah, this tank is cool. I just wish I could have bought the tank by itself, not as a kit.

 

[ycbs]

I had one of these tanks for about a year and a half at work. The original filter is a POS. I had to replace it about 2 months in. I went with a Whisper 10, since a) it's black like the background I had and b) the AC I had was the loudest HOB filter I've ever owned. Rattled like you wouldn't believe. Not good at work. The Whisper did a good job.

I came back to work after Thanksgiving to find the tank had started leaking from somewhere around the bottom of the plastic frame. I thought acrylic was supposed to be much less likely to leak than glass?

I also had the worst time finding a balance with this tank. I had low light plants and had algae issues the entire time. I started out running the light 8 hours (so I could enjoy while at work), but got algae so bad (hair, BBA) I ended up only running it about 4 hours a day total, and even then still had algae to clean off when doing wc's. The java moss I had in there did great, though.