From: harold@wam.umd.edu (James B. Harold)
Newsgroups: alt.aquaria,rec.aquaria
Subject: Re: Set up question
Date: 27 Aug 92 13:38:22 GMT
Organization: University of Maryland, College Park

In article <1992Aug27.060046.11343@unislc.uucp> livings@unislc.uucp (Ross Livingston) writes:
>From: frazier@CS.UCLA.EDU
>
>Both, actually.  What I'm suggesting is try to avoid a literal
>pile of rocks in the corner of the tank.  When we set up our

Thought I'd emphasize here that you do need to be careful
with rocks in African tanks.  The fish will happily dig around
and under the rocks, leading to the possibility of rock falls
and cracked glass.  

>   > What are your feelings about a UGF?
>How about the rest of you?

A point to consider:  if you are getting _really_ small fish
(like the smaller shell dwellers) and you want them to dig,
you might want to skip the UGF (i.e., you might want sand instead
of gravel, which is too fine for a UGF).  In my current Tanganyikan
tank I wanted L. brevis to be able to dig, so I put down 
sand as a substrate and ran the UGF as an RUGF.  The intent
was to prevent the substrate from going anaerobic, not so
much to provide filtration.  Seems to have worked so far...

>
>   > I plan on getting a Fluval 303 and was 
>
>Look out - I'm even less happy with cannister filters.
<.....>
>Anyone else share his opinion?

Yep.  I tend to clean my UGF the most frequently (because I
do it with a Python at every water change), power filters
next, and canisters last, with the differences due mostly
to laziness on my part.

>However, if you have a small amount of
>gravel over your UG plate, it will be easy for a fish to expose
>the plate and eliminate your UG filter.  

I've always wondered just how big a deal this was.  I had
a UGF running on a 55g mbuna tank for years, and of course
the inhabitants frequently dug down to the filter plate.  But
I always found copious amounts of detris in the gravel when
I cleaned.  Certainly the area that's been cleared isn't
going to contribute, but I always seemed to continue to get flow
through the rest of the gravel.  *shrug*  Depends strongly
on the tank, gravel size, etc., I would suppose.  Certainly
I wouldn't want the UGF to be the only filter in this case
(but then I would never want a UGF to be the only filter...).

By the way, has anybody out there _used_ the new UGF's that
are advertised in FAMA?  They have an angled plate which
is supposed to concentrate debris toward a tube, through
which it could be extracted.  These strike me as potentially
very useful in tanks with messy inhabitants...

>Get the powerheads - you'll want them for water circulation in the
>tank.  RUGF's are kind of bad about depleting the dissolved O2.

Agreed.  I have 2 powerheads attached to sponges in my 55g with
a canister driven RUGF.  They give me backup filters and provide
O2, water movement, etc.  And, IMHO, you can never have too many
powerheads :-)

Finally, if I didn't mention this in e-mail, anybody considering
getting into Africans should consider joining the American
Cichlid Association.  The Trading Post (distributed on
alternate months) lists people who have fish to sell, fish
often unavailable through stores.  There are ups and downs
to mail ordering fish:  you may not know anything about
the individual, there's air freight to consider, etc., but
it's still definately worth looking into.

James Harold
harold@wam.umd.edu