carlrs wrote:



As already suggest Eheims are great, however I personally think they
are a bit overpriced and do not recommend the wet-dry canister filter
by Eheim; it is more a gimmick than anything.
The Via Aqua and Filstar are good ones for the money in my experience
of aquarium maintenance.
Although popular, (have yet to see why) the Fluval have back pressure
and impeller problems especially when running secondary devices such
as Fluidized filres or UV Sterilizers.
I suggest reading this artilce about aquarium filtration (the canister
filter section):
http://www.americanaquariumproducts....iltration.html

Carl
http://www.americanaquariumproducts....formation.html



I've got a Fluval 405 and a FX5 on two of my larger tanks and have not
had any problems.....in fact I couldn't sing the praises of the FX5 much
higher - the thing is that it is probably overkill for a 200L
tank.....because the 405 is running empty and just giving water flow for
a reef tank (it came with the tank so we decided to just use it rather
than adding multiple powerheads that would add to the heat of the tank)
I can't really comment on it's ease of use in a freshwater environment
but we can't remember the hassles with priming that we have with the
earlier models.....

In 4 years of using the Fluval cannisters I've not had a impeller
problem although I do keep spares having read about it - these are
gathering dust.....I've recently had the plastic catch on an impeller
cover go but again I had a spare......my main gripe with the earlier
models was the amount of arm pumping power to get it going again after
maintenance which now with later versions does not appear to be an
issue.....

Gill