Hi all,

Thanks for the inputs. Very helpful.

Moving in the house? Same floor is easy. Stairs add work, but still
much better than having to drive somewhere.

driving move.. sends shiver down my spine! The only trick is that I
actually have to lift the tank out of the stand and rotate it 180 when
moving to a new location. that's going to be fun...

perhaps Coarse gravel isn't the greatest bio-filter due to reduced
surface area, but it's not bad. I just think your plants had as much to
do with it.

may be I also have two large driftwoods too that are quite porous.
that probably helps too. tank isn't that heavily loaded either, so...
(medium load, I think)

The bio-max ceramic rings are a nice product. I would spread them out
over the 3 baskets. If you do use any filter media (finer than the

will one basket full of BioMAX be enough? or should I buy some extra?

sponges), then it would be in the lowset basket, as your final mechanical

ok. I think I'm going to put the blue bonded floss on the bottom to
get that extra filteration past the foam blocks then. still not sure
what to put in the middle... may be I'll put 1/2 floss, 1/2 BioMax..
hmmm...

filtration. The Bio-max does almost no mechanical filtration, and you
should keep their pores relatively clean.

if you have just the foam blocks, how badly does the BioMAX clog if
there are no additional mechanical filteration between the foam blocks
and the BioMAX? I guess when you rinse you either rinse with tank
water, or with conditioned tap water? I never tried to preserve
bacteria in the Magnum, so I never really paid attention to that sort
of stuff.

The most vulnerable components of the 304 are (from most to least): the
impeller (nylon portion), the clear plastic impeller shaft holder which
snaps in to the pump base (snap-tang gets a bit of action), and the
unit's handles if you ever try re-installing it backwards (watch for the
power cord notch). There isn't any significant failure history, so if
you have an LFS which stocks impellers, you should be fine (or if you are
not close by, then a spare impeller might be warranted).

I have good LFS, but not sure if they actually have spares in stock
(never really seen them in display. may be it's behind the counter. I
should check). thanks for the list..

37G heavily planted tank.

Well.... UGFs, coarse gravel and heavily planted are not something I
usually hear in the same sentence, but if it works for you, then you sure
don't need my advice ;~).

ha ha. yeah.. this has a long history that led up to it. I just had
NO CLUE what I was doing when I started, that's all! coarse gravel
(they're actually more like small pebbles)+plant is usually bad
(crushes roots, impossible keep them anchored until roots develop). on
top of that UGF+rooted plant is like a total no-no. I have a feeling
that all the amazon swords that survived the initial massive die-off
has enough roots mangling the UGF and networking the gravel now that it
seems to have struck some sort of a steady state that actually works,
and they're propagating along with anubius and java ferns (totally out
of control on those two). This, of course, is all by accident :-) One
of these days I'll probably have to take the UGF apart, and I dread
that day.. plant roots and UGF plate probably fused together with a
complete floss-like root density under the plating, with many gravel
embedded in it..

I got smarter tho... my 6gal betta/oto tank has biowheel filter,
flourite, and java fern (that is completely taking over the tank now..
may need to dig some of them out and give 'em away or something...).
now if I can keep my 2yr old toddler from banging on the glass freaking
out the poor fish...

linda