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Hello all
I was hoping for some suggestions on a filter to use in a paludarium set-up.
I work in a LFS and one of our tanks is a 55 gallon paludarium, containing in total about 20 gallons of water. In it are fire belly newts, frogs, several kinds of shrimps and loads of guppies, mostly fry. Theres several kinds of plants. Heres a picture hopefully the link will work:
http://gallery.pethobbyist.com/photo.php?id=358190
Currently it has an elite stingray 10 on it, as well as a table top pump powering the waterfall. The water parameters are all decent, but that isn't our problem. The tank is several months established at this time and as such now there is an extraordinary amount of gunge and debris building up in the substrate. I gravel siphon every week, but its getting complicated as there isn't a whole lot of water (not nearly enough to do a large section anyway) and I hate disturbing all the plants, as tho we sell the animals out of this tank, the plants are for display only.
I'm mainly asking because many of our customers love the set up and want to start their own. I feel like this might be a set up that an undergravel filter would be useful for, but we don't use those in our stores and I have no experience with them. The only filters we use in store are over the back (mostly aquaclear) and supplemental fluvals and biowheels in some tanks.
Our tank at the store has a lot of sand, which from what I understand dosen't fare well with undergravel filters, but as long as the setup only has larger gravel sizes would this work better?
Or.. is there perhaps another filter out there that would work better?
Any suggestions would be great!
Sheila

There are a few models of upside down internal that are designed for tanks with low water levels and have the pump itself on the bottom of the unit rather than the top. I think these might be a better choice for you than UGFs as a tank like the one in the picture would make a UGF a fairly inefficient choice.

UGFs tend to work best when the layer of gravel on top is of an even depth with no extra decor to disrupt the flow. The tank in the picture shows a mound of gravel (so there would be pretty much no flow at all on that side at all) a pile of rocks and a bunch of live plants. All of these things create what are known as "dead spots" where the water won't flow through the plates.

I'd just go with an appropriately sized internal filter, preferably of the upside down variety to save burnt out motors if the water level drops, to make sure you get some good flow and basic filtration. It isn't all that much room for biomedia, but it should give you more than a stingray and may even be able to be tied in with the waterfall.


For animals, the entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks. - Terry Pratchett