The Puffer Forum

The story:

Well, I want to remove the undergravel filter from my 10g BW tank. I hate the dumb things, and I have an extra 30g rated HOB i'm going to put on the tank in addition to its other HOB. I want to be done with under gravel filters for good.


The plot:

I'm going to drop the bomb on my parents and ask if I can upgrade the 10g to a 20g. The stand I have will fit up to a 20g high, I think.
(dimensions of the stand are: just under 25" long, and just over 12" wide.) I don't know the actual dimensions of a 20g high though, i'll try googling it unless someone can tell me.
I figure that i'll already have so much of the tank down, it'll be pretty easy to transer everything once the UG plates are out. And i'll just premix ten gallons of water, and add that to the new 20g, and itll just be like I did a 50% WC. No harm done as far as I know.


The plan:

Move the occupant (Chubby) into a bucket while doing the procedure. Scoop a good deal of gravel out into another bucket, with tankwater in it. Take out the plates, and hope there isn't too much detritus down there. if there is, i'll siphon it all out. The rest is pretty self explanatory: just move everything over to the 20g, and add 10g more water. I also want to get another bag of aragonite, since i'm using gravel right now. I dont think that it would be safe to take out all the gravel and move everything to a new tank. I will be adding a new (well actually old, but extra) HOB to the tank, as well as using Chubbys tank water, with 10g more added, which I figure is just like a 50% water change.


The conclusion:

It'll be good all way around. Chubby in a tank where he won't stunt, and the dreaded undergravel filter plates out.
So, sound like a good plan? Any fatal flaws I have overlooked?[/i]

Looks good. I took out the UGFs on my two tanks a couple of weeks ago and water quality has improved tremendously.

One thing you might want to consider doing: a really thorough gravel vacuuming the day before you do the transfer. There is so much crud in UGF gravel, and doing at least one good vacuuming will prevent you from transferring a lot of that old mulm into the new tank. I vacuumed my gravel very thoroughly before changing out my UGFs and was still sickened by all the gunk I found.

PuffTheMagicFishy wrote: One thing you might want to consider doing: a really thorough gravel vacuuming the day before you do the transfer.

Hehe, don't worry, I usually do a very thourough vaccuming anway.

Yup, I have had my share of UGF nightmares...I remember back in the day when I took down my first tank and looked under the plate... At that point I decided that the LFS guy who told me that UGF filters never need to be cleaned was wrong...

I still can't beleive how far i've come since then *stands proudly*

Any filter needs appropriate upkeep.

http://www.thepufferforum.com/articles/ ... lters.html

RTR wrote:Any filter needs appropriate upkeep.

http://www.thepufferforum.com/articles/ ... lters.html

Yes, I am aware of that. The experience I stated above was a long time ago, in a galaxy far far away.

I think I've missed something; who is Chubby?? Is he your F8? If so your plan sounds awesome! What an awesome home for a F8!

John, 20H's have a 12x24 footprint, so your stand should work just fine.

Good luck taking that sucker out, its a messy job.

OraLacerta wrote:I think I've missed something; who is Chubby?? Is he your F8? If so your plan sounds awesome! What an awesome home for a F8!

Whoops!!! Sorry Michelle, I missed you and Myaj's replys

Hehe, yep, Chubby is my F8! He was my second puffer. (My first puffer was a GSP...his story is a sad one, maybe i'll post it someday...)

Thanks Myaj, your right it really was a messy job.

Although I overplanned a bit. It wasn't that hard. All I had to do was reach in and pull it out lol.

In the future, I will only use UGF for shrimp-only tanks. One of my friends from another forum does that, and he says it works really well for him.

Pictures?

puffermama wrote:Pictures?

Of the process?

No, I just reached in and pulled the plates out

BTW, did you ever get to upgrade to that 20L?

I just read your other post about Chubby's current state of health, poor little guy.

OraLacerta wrote:BTW, did you ever get to upgrade to that 20L?

No...

Although I am moving soon, so I may be able to convince the parents to upgrade then, if I can pull Chubby through his current state.

Well, it's not a big deal! He doesn't need the 20G any time soon. Keep your chin up John.

I just saw the other thread about Chubby, I'm so sorry.
I came to this thread to see if I could see where anything could have gone wrong, the only question that came to my mind is could there have been some chemicals in the bucket - apparently the chemicals can get absorbed by the plastic - but that's hardly likely.

I missed your reply to my request for pictures, the request was for pictures of the Puffer ... preferably very happy in his newly filtered tank! ... hope those can still happen!

Hey,

Yeah it coudln't be from changing the undergravel filter, that happend almost a month ago, if I remember correctly.