Filtering you aquarium is very important. Filters are what keep your fish alive, keep the aquarium smelling better, circulating the water, providing oxygen to the water, and more. But as you may know, there are many different filters and picking just one can be hard. But the truth is, there are three types of filtration. This is the area you need to worry about, not about what brand of filter you want to get. The three types of filtration are as follows:

•     Mechanical Filtration. This type of filtration is the most common. This type of filtration physically removes particles and debris from the water. These filters usually use foam blocks, pads, filtering floss, or filter cartridges that hold carbon. This part of filtration doesn't need to be changed like the other types but only needs to be cleaned, but remember that they do need to occasionally changed.

•    Chemical Filtration. This type of filtration collect pollutants in the water and purifies the water. This is mostly done with activated carbon. This part of filtration is very important and needs to be changed regularly.

•    Biological Filtration. This type of filtration is the most important. This type of filtration helps with the "good guy" bacteria. This type of filtration gives a home for the bacteria and provide the bacteria with a lot of "food" that it needs to live. This bacteria break down ammonia and nitrite so the fish aren't hurt by it. Biological filtration is usually with mechanical filtration so this one you don't have to worry about.

    There are many types of filters, but they all do one, two, or all three of the three above types of filtration. Knowing this, you may want to choose a filter with all three types of filtration, or at least two or three filters that, together, have all three types of filtration.

    Filters have sizes to them also. A filter for a 10 gallon aquarium is most likely worthless for a 100 gallon aquarium. Filters have a GPH rating, which stands for Gallons Per Hour. This rating tells how many gallons go through the filter in an hour. For example, a filter with a GPH rating of 300 will filter 300 gallons of water in one hour. So what size should you get? It depends on the aquarium. Your aquarium should be filtered about 3 or 4 times an hour, you can go up to 5 times an hour for larger aquariums. So to find out what size filter you should get, multiply the aquarium size in gallons by 3, 4, or 5, higher numbers if you have more fish. This will give you the size of the filter you need.

    To make your aquarium better, divide this number in two, and get TWO filters with that rating. This has many advantages. First, your aquarium will be filtered better because the work the filter media has to do is dived in half. Second, if one filter is broken, you aquarium will have at least a half size filter working as opposed to nothing. Third, you can use different types of media in each filter. Forth, you can clean one filter while the other is still filtering. Fifth, there is more current, which means more water surface agitation, which means more oxygen exchange, but this could be bad for fish that don't like moving waters. The only problem is that you may have to spend a little more than if you just got one filter.

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Last Updated: Wednesday, February 05, 2003 01:56:05 PM -0500