marke14

Hello everyone!

I got this shiny new tank for my birthday a couple weeks back. I finally pushed it (empty) into it's final spot the other day and I am getting ready to set it all up.

I want to do a heavily planted tank, preferably el natural style with potting soil under gravel, and a few varieties of fish.

I have two smaller (20 & 10 gal.) tanks which are planted and doing fine with guppies and mollies, so I am not completely new to this game. But I am confused and torn about how to handle a couple of things and was wondering what you guys thought.

The filter it came with draws water from *really* close to the bottom and pulls it up into an overtank 2-box filter media via a tube. The problems/question is: the filter hangs down a lot (like several inches) below the bottom of the hood, and there's a sticker on the pump that indicates it can't be submerged. This will have the effect of not allowing it to be filled to the top, and I don't like how that's going to look. What should I do?

Here she is:






It's a "Jebo R3100KG"






It has a little front hood containing the light fixtures, the on/off switch and a lid that opens on either side of the switch:





Here's the back, overtank filter part:





And the top of the pump unit:









You can see the filter hangs way down into the tank; the little sticker is the water level indicator:





It attaches thusly to the long, perforated tube that drips into the filter media:





Here's the pump and it's hanger/adapter thing (I tried to just remove it and put the pump directly onto the bottom of the hood, but it's a female-female adapter issue). It has a little thing my brother tells me is for bypass for a CO2 rig (I've always used the fermentation-style CO2). Very cool.







It looks much better this way:

freydo

if you're set on keeping this filter, the first thing i would do is hack some of the length from the inlet tube, so that you can raise the height of the end cap/protective thingy. that would be simplest.

as for the main unit that is in the water. if the manufacturer says it shouldn't be submerged past a certain point, it probably shouldn't for safety concerns. however i wonder if that's just to satisfy safety regulations. case in point, a lot of water heaters and power-heads have those same water level indicators, but they are normally submerged completely without any issues.

i'm not advocating you submerge it and see if you get a shock or not. that wouldn't be good.

if it really bothers you, my suggestion would be to abandon the filter part of the hood an replace with a traditional HOB filter or canister filter.

LilLou

Is there any chance that you could shorten up the top piece enough to sit that power head on top of the plastic in stead of under it? This would solve both of your problems. It would bring the intake up from the bottom and it would get the water level to the top of the tank.

ed seeley

How about getting a pump that's fully submersible to feed the filter? Most powerheads could be mounted much lower down, fully under the water, and it could then be hidden far more easily behind some rock or wood. You could even switch the feed pipe from the pump to a clear one to minimise its appearance too. You'd need a strainer over the pump to stop large debris going into the filter, but this would also stop baby fish etc. getting sucked up into the impellor too.

It looks like a decent sized filter and seems a shame to waste it. If youy are going to inject CO2 though the trckling action of the filter will gas off loads of CO2 and kinda defeat the point! If you're going 'El Natural' I don't think it will be such an issue (but others know far, far more on that score than me!).

BTW the airline attached to your pump is usually for injecting air via a venturi (it sucks air in). You could add CO2 that way but it's not a very efficient way of doing it IMO. Most will go straight up to the surface.

marke14

Hey guys, thanks for the replies.

Well, I am not completely set on keeping the filter. My inquiry is more along the lines of "can I make this work?"

Yeah, freydo I hear you - possibly, even probably, it could be fully submerged. I can't imagine they'd really design a pump like that to NOT be submersible, but I am not sure and I don't want to find out the hard way

Unfortunately, the hole where the pump hangs down from is much too small to pass the pump through; I have thought about "modifying" the hole with like a Dremel tool or something, but I'd really rather just go with the canister filter instead (or a submersible power head).

Since I was planning on getting a canister filter anyway, I thought maybe what I'd do is remove the filter pump in the pictures and route the output from the canister filter somehow into that drip line in the top filter box, so that it gets another layer of filtration (even if it's essentially only a bio layer). Either that, or if it's too restrictive to the output flow just dump the output straight into one of the boxes on top there ... either way, in other words, I don't plan on having the output tube (from the canister filter) go directly into the tank.

freydo

rigging a canister filter into the existing filter box should work. it would be best to keep the existing hood if you can, because it fits the tank (it's a bowfront right?).

most canister plumbing should allow you to do what you want. good luck and keep us updated on your plans.

marke14

I will definitely be keeping the hood, no matter what I do - it fits it exactly.

I am so excited to get this thing going. Tomorrow is Friday then I get the weekend to get the topsoil and gravel and get going! Woo Hoo!