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I see the price of Aquaclears have gone up, then I saw all the good reviews on the Emperor power filters and decided to buy one. I must admit that I like the Emperor filters a lot better. My tank looks much better and those biowheels make a lot of sence to me. Wish I could change my name to Emperor fan or something like that. Aquaclear has lost my buisness not that the Aquaclears are a bad filter, but I just simply feel the Emperors get the job done better.

17 years experience with freshwater.

I like the emperors, but the only thing is, that Aquaclears still have much more Surface Area and More room for media. The Emperors have a limited space, and rely on premade cartridges! I hate these.....SPonges RULE!!!

Anyway, i like ACs a lot better than the Penguin (Step lower than emperor) and thats currently what i have.

LOL, its to bad! You name is now going to change......Speaking about that, mine is too! GobyFan 2007

Oh well!

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I have an ancient penguin filter and it still works well - whenever I need to use it.

Should I change my name to penguin fan? I dont care for linux so I wont. I'll change it whenever I get a camera and buy a premium membership.

More then enough media space in a emporer/penguin. They have media trays where you can fill with rock. you can insert a large celled sponge in the intake. instead of using a second filter pad in the added slots of the emp you can use a padd full of rock. Then on top of that you got the biowheels which are bar far the best method IMO.

I have used penguin 330s for about 4 yrs now. When i first got mbuna ( about 3 yrs ago) they got sand in one. Last month i finially replaced the impellar due to noise, still functions. I ended up buying a penguin 350 the latest version. Seems to make more noise then the 330s but this might be due to new biowheels. They take some time to shush up.

I also own a eheim canister. If i could do it all over i would use canisters completly. I think the marineland filters do their job and do it well. out of 5 filters 2 have come out of the box with a tiny leak, nothing a dab of silicone couldnt fix. But it just shows some lacks in quality. They also tend to fail to restart after electricity comes back on after a power failure. Luckily im usually home so this isnt a HUGE deal. Someone else it might be.

Anyway you get what you pay for. You want a filter working well for a long time, get a eheim. You want to get the job done for 4-5 yrs then get a marineland.

Interesting, I went in the reverse direction; I got the Emperor first and then got an Aquaclear for Christmas, and I felt that I prefer the Aquaclear a lot better. However, this was after quite some time of not actually cleaning my Emperor; it appears that after I did a full cleaning of the Emperor that it's back to it's old self. You might want to do a full-clean of your Aquaclear and see if it returns to its former glory, more or less; when I say full-clean, I mean take the whole thing apart, especially the impeller and motor. I'm running both of these filters (Emp 400, AC 500?) right now on my 125 gallon, but since I have a poop machine of a plec I feel like I still need another filter; I'm considering going canister to get the job done.

Admittedly I'm not using the Emperor cartridges right now since I ran out a while ago. I just took some filter floss and a carbon pad and loaded them into the Emperor with the empty grey cartridges that Emperor provides. The grey cartridges wouldn't close on the media since there was too much floss, but since the Emperor has two slots, what I did was use each slot for half of the grey cartridge, and then put the media in between. Works pretty well.

Biowheels make a ton of sense. If you run Penguins and Emperors on all your tanks all you need to do to get your cycle going on a new tank is to switch around some of the biowheels; works REALLY well for jump-starting cycles, but since I only have the one Emperor I haven't really had the chance to actually try it.

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The aquarist is one who must learn the ways of the biologist, the chemist, and the veterinarian.

The biowheel alone in the emperor does better than the whole Aquaclear filter put together. Labratory test prove that these biowheels do work better. Another thing they raised the price on the Aquaclears to a point where they are not worth the money spent, for just a few dollars more I got the Emperor that has much more space for biological filtration. First they have an extra large filter cartridge, then they have a extra large media container, then they have the biowheel after that, between all of this space the emperor has more area for benificial bacteria to grow. On top of that the quality is much better and these things are so easy to assemble, I didn't even need the instructions to put mine together.

Here is another thing about the Aquaclears that is true! if something happens the filter clogs on you and you are not around there is no overflow going back into the tank, your aquarium water will be pumped over the top onto the floor! I live in an upstairs apartment, im not taking that chance.

There are also many ways to modifiy the emperor so you don't have to buy the expensive filter cartridges. I just bought an extra media container for mine and one Coralife pureflow 12" by 18" filter pad. All I have to do is cut it to fit the inside of the first media container. In the second media container I cut a coralife pureflow 50 micron pad to fit the inside of that, if i need carbon I can put it one one side of the pad, if I want extra biomedia I can put that on the other side of the pad in the media container.

I have found that I can actually put more stuff in my emperor than I can in my Aquaclears, the emperor is bigger with more space. I don't get where people say that these emperors are very limited as to what you can do with them. I see alot of different options. This filter does everything that you need and more plus it keeps my tanks more clear than my Aquaclears ever have. This filter is a five star filter all the way.

17 years experience with freshwater.

I've been using Aquaclears for years without any overflows... I have two 10-gallon tanks next to each other, one with the Penguin Bio-wheel filter, and one with the Aquaclear. I prefer the Aquaclear - I believe it's more efficient for mechanical filtration, plus when the water level on the tank with the Bio-wheel gets below a certain level (about an inch from the top of the tank. It is a pretty old filter), the wheel stops turning - so any benefit from that piece of technology is gone. The Aquaclear keeps on pumping even if the water level is quite low. I also love the adjustable flow.

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hmmm well i have a biowheel filter as well and what superlion wrote is true. if you dont watch the water level then it will stop moving. however if your on top of things like that then its an exceptional filter! ive never had an aquaclear the only other filter i have right now is a tetra whiseper.

The true test of character is not how much we know how to do, but how we behave when we dont know what to do.

hmmm, that doesn't make sence to me sora, I just did a 25 percent water change in my aquarium leaving the filter running and while the waterflow did slow down some it did not stop and my biowheel kept right on spinning. For those people out there though who let there water evaporate to the point where the filter can't operate properly then there is no way those kind of people should even be keeping fish, that would tell me the fish are not being cared for properly.

Another thing I would like to mention there is also a difference between the biowheel setup in a penguin and a Emperor, The penguins only have the water flowing under the wheel to power it, the emperor has water flowing under the wheel plus a spraybar to power there wheels. I have seen the wheels in the penguins jam but not on my Emperors as the emperors are giving there wheels more power to turn. The only biowheel filter I will own is an Emperor. No offence is intended in my post here we all have difering opinions on the subject but from what I can see from my experience the emperor comes out on top for me.

The Emperor just seems to offer more, to each his own.

17 years experience with freshwater.