Subscribe already. Thanks for the knowledge.

Awesome thank you for subscribing and hopefully you learned so new things or are thinking about them differently now.

@@TheAquariumLibrary I'm just getting into the fish hobby & have been doing a lot of research on the under gravel filters I think from what you described is just what I'm looking for. I have a 75 gal I've got a lot of live plant's to put in it & I took time to look at the comments on here & I'm interested in how would I connect a power head on the tubes (I'm only using 2). The tubes don't fit the power head on the pump, do I use a hose that will fit the tube & the power head or how does that work? cause I'm lost on this kind of thing, can you help me out ?

❤🧡💛💚💙💜

You’re welcome. And I completely agree with what you said about the filter companies. Not a lot of money in a one time purchase that lasts for decades. Can’t say that about too many other filters out there.

Been keeping fish since I was 13. UGFs have always been solid for me. There is something to the deep substrate/anoxic approach (those people hate UGFs) but you can do both in your aquarium if you set it up right.

Amen, bro, amen!

Thanks for sharing! How large are the tanks that have UGF on them?

same here

I appreciate it.

I also have been surprised at the drastic swing away from UGF and their fallout with most fish keepers. I just set up a new tank that is going to have an undergravel filter with a power head and spread bar. Talk about fancy! I feel as though there are a lot of people that use them but don’t say much about them for fear of people calling them out about how bad they are for using such an outdated filtration system. I hope you find enjoyment in the hobby after so many years away!

You can still buy them, but hurry because every place I've seen them at are on clearance.

I haven’t been seeing as many of them as I used to but I haven’t seen them on clearance.

@@TheAquariumLibrary the PetSmart(s) and Petcos in my area have them on clearance. I haven't seen any ugf's in any of the fish store's I've been to lately. I stand by ugf's even though I'm not using one now. The only thing that I can think of that would be a detriment is the lack of anaerobic area's in the aquarium. I'm not an expert though.

What causes algae?

Thank you! Malarkey is such a fun word to say and use.

22:20 Yet ,,Bada Bing, Bada Bum" is the real giveaway that he is a member of the aquarium mafia.

A few more malarkey and we’d have a drinking game 🤔

You’re very welcome. I am actually going to be trying out an even older way of using UGF promoted by Dr. Kevin Novak that seem to me to make the most sense. More sense than the traditional high flow UGF with powerheads or lots of air. I ran a mini experiment with one of my tanks just to see how it compares and it is crazy that differences. The level of compaction and flow between a low flow and high flow with a power head was leagues of differences. And overall the tank has performed better than my high tech tank even though they have the same plants. I’m setting up a new tank here shortly and am going to try it the slow flow way and see how it does. Based on everything he has talked about and other peoples results it should work out splendidly.

@@TheAquariumLibrary I anxiously await your results.

Did you follow any specific instructions for you discus tanks when setting up the UGF? I think they are also great for planted tanks and about to set up a 65 gallon with one.

@@TheAquariumLibrary I just put the plates in the tank with thick layer of pea gravel and sand . I have jar stones at the bottom of my lift tubes with elbows at the top that I removed the carbon from. As long as you have good air pumps that are strong enough for a tank that size you’re good I think. Also would you recommend I clean out the waste under the plates every now and again or just let my plants use it ? I’m still getting used to running under gravel filters on something this size! Thanks for the video made me feel more confident in this experiment lol

I haven’t bothered with trying to clean the stuff under my UGF for three years and don’t plan to start now. Glad it gave you some confidence to continue on in you experiment.

I have heard very similar stories from other people about that. I think UGF will start coming back into "style" if you will as more people get frustrated with their HOB.

if it's healthy it's not smelly or smell fishy.

@@reklamador27 No, when it is healthy it smells earthy.

Huh. That’s a pretty good idea. Have you been able to look under your tank and see how few solids were there.

And lowering that risk is a very large thing to do when dealing with even just 10+ gallons of water. If you have a second tank, you're probably going to end up with a third tank and can put the UGF in it. After I see people go past one tank it is usually just snowballs into many more tanks.

@@TheAquariumLibrary I have 2 a 30 gal & a 75 but I also have 5 more on my porch that's empty I just added a ugf to it with power heads & it's looking awesome, now maybe my plants will start growing better being that's my main goal.

You’re very welcome! Glad you enjoyed it!

Glad you found the video helpful!

That’s another great reason why air filtration, specifically UGF, are so good. Thank you for sharing that. There is definitely more peace of mind knowing that if you are gone and the power even flickers that your filtration will start back up again without needing to be primed.

That is awesome! Hope you enjoy your new tank!

You’re welcome and I’m glad you enjoyed it. Do you have UGF up and running currently?

And that is a common theme that I have been hearing from so many people with undergravel filters. That they work and they work for a long time.

That is what I hear so often from people. They've had them running for years now, they still are working, and still enjoy using them.

I will look into getting the needed equipment. I hope that Northwest seed will have it. Nobody else will, plus they want you to buy filters that require purchasing new filters every week or so and they don’t work well. Besides, with under gravel filtration there are no ugly over the back filters to hide with plants. Just the two back corners.

Thank you, I am glad you appreciated the video. You said it well, that an informed and knowledgable person realizes that all they need for their tank is a simple air driven filtration system to do the biological and potentially mechanical filtration for the tank. Not a filter 10x the cost to purchase and many more times to operate.

Plant are a good way to combat nitrates. I’ve made an UGF that should work with fine substrate like sand. It’s doable and will be posting it shortly.

100% agree with you. If you make an ecologically well balanced tank and understand what is happening in your tank you are off to a really successful start. The sad thing is they may not even know that they are fools, and think they are really smart for using the external filters and additional materials. I hope some of them stumble across this video and reconsider all they know about UGF and realize there is another way that works well and might even work better than what they are using currently.

Awesome! Hope it works as well as it does for you as it does me. P

They are still out there if you look hard enough; they just aren’t pushed by stores because they make very little money on them.

I’ll take their undergravel filters and the metaframe tanks they have laying around while they are at it. I completely agree and don’t think this hobby needs to be a “keeping up with the Jones’s”. Give me a good linear air piston pump, sponge filters, undergravel filters, and box filters and I’d be perfectly happy, and be out less money for it than all this new equipment.

@@TheAquariumLibrary The 1960s are being stingy with their slate-bottomed Metaframes...

Can you put the 1980s back on? I like them better 😂

Huh. I hadn’t thought of them as an oversized box filter before. That is another plus side that I forgot to mention in the video is that the plates use up more space so less substrate has to be used. Also you can put rocks directly onto the UGF plays and not worry about pressure points on an aquarium bottom. Exactly. Some roots very well could be sloughed off if the flow is too high, but I’ve never noticed root pieces coming out of my UGF. I think the best part of sponge filters, box filters, and UGF is they don’t leak out of the tank when they break or crack because they are in water as you said!

Yeah I hear people say that clogging up the UGF is a common thing as well but I lacks any merit in my opinion and from my experience. I can understand not believing it because for awhile I didn’t think it would work either. I decided so what if my plants die I want to see if this actually works or not and not have other people telling me it doesn’t.

Always glad to have someone else join who loves undergravel filters as there are not many of us around.

I love how few moving parts come with an UGF and how even in air stops flowing for a little while it isn’t the end of the world. But that would be the case for a HOB filter or canister filter

That’s awesome, well everything except the tank splitting apart.

Thank you for the suit tip. I had gotten up and down so many times getting rid I completely forgot to check how it looked. What plants are you growing with your cichlids?

@@TheAquariumLibrary In my cichlid tanks I just keep elodea and hornwart. I planted the elodea in sections like gardens. My cichlid tanks are not heavily planted. I keep meaning to add some ferns and moss to them too, but I haven't gotten around to it. I keep a couple non-cichlid tanks that are more heavily planted, mostly due to dwarf sag overrunning them. I just got into plants when I converted my tanks, so I started with the hardest things to kill and gave them a few weeks to establish before adding the fish. Occasionally the cichlids will yank a stem out, but that's why I chose elodea. It's fine floating until I get a chance to replant and they replant easily.

That’s awesome to hear.

@@TheAquariumLibrary yeah, the population just exploded. The tank hits it's bio-load limit and you start to see algae and a few dead shrimp, back off feeding and it self corrects. I think I've had to actually gravel vac and 1/2 water change every 4-5 months, and it's not a big tank.

What soils did you use in your system? I am about to make a very similar system.

Are you still using UGF in your current tanks?

@@TheAquariumLibrary no not anymore. But it was cheap and cool. If only we knew not to wash the gravel when changing water. All the good bacteria died every time 😂

😂😂 yeah that is a pretty big whoopsies 🤣

This is true, but I personally don't see a great need to clean out underneath the plate, and any drilled part of an aquarium is just one more place for it to leak. So I try to avoid drilled aquariums when I can.

Have you had your crypts sending out runners and propagating? Completely agree, why not transform our entire substrate into a filter instead of adding an additional one onto it. I completely agree with what you said about the marketing angle. Selling someone a product once and having them come back 50 years later to buy a replacement is terrible for the business when they think about it short term. I think they are looking at it the wrong way. They seem to be in it for only the short term profit of selling a cheap filter that needs replacement cartridges, replacement parts, and eventually a new filter. Instead of that model, what if people found success with the hobby, stayed for a long time, started to want more challenging and expensive fish, and wanted to set up more tanks to enjoy more fish because they have had such good to success with their "cheap UGF". I'd love to hear who you think are posers. I have really been in the youtube game for 3 years, but have been keeping fish for 15 years at this point. I think, surprisingly, that people are starting to wake up and think for themselves when it comes to fish tanks and not trusting what their fish stores say. LONG LIVE THE PLEBS FILTER!

@@TheAquariumLibrary Runners? My crypts exploded in growth, just 3 months into life in my UGF-run 75 gallon long! I've got 3 varieties of the hardy C. wendtii in there (green, Tropica & Mi Oya). And tbh, I went el cheapo & bought a single pot of each variety; dividing every potted clump into individual plants. The overall look of the tank was sparse, back then. Today? I have to keep pulling out runners in order to maintain the size of each crypt colony! Pardon my crypt rant but when friends & fellow blackwater, wild betta geeks saw this UGF-run tank of mine? They were all *blown away* by how such a lush tank is possible without CO² injection & a power filter. The secret is this... Personally, I have visited the habitats of cryptocorynes in the wild, in South East Asia (Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, The Philippines & Thailand). And I've studied the substrate composition at each site. There are basically 2 types of crypts in Nature. Riverine crypts such as C. affinis that grow in river rapids that flow over a limestone topography. And? The swamp crypts that grow in sand/mud that's rich in organics from fallen leaf litter. So, the crypts can either source for carbon from the soil organics or in the case of riverine species, from calcium carbonate in their hardwater habitat. Ok! Back to our UGF topic of discussion. So, botanists typically recommend that a substrate of washed (coarse) river sand be used for the submerged cultivation of crypts in an aquarium. And I use lots of 'botanicals' (tree leaves, seed pods, etc) in my tank. This is where the UGF is just brilliant! As the botanicals slowly break down? The UGF pulls those little bits of organic goodies into the substrate. And you guessed it, the crypts love it! They're receiving nutrition as they would in the wild & the best part is since the whole substrate has water circulating through it, these organics do not get a chance to break down anaerobically. The nitrifying bacteria breaks down the organics into useable nutrients & the crypts mop 'em up! That's the "magic" of the UGF although, granted my tank is lightly stocked thus, it's able to cope with extra organic build up in the substrate. Still, the UGF would work perfectly well for a moderately & even slightly overstocked community tank. Dude, the LFS closest to my home, down the blocks have been in business for 4 decades. And it has been passed down from father to son - including the UGF! Their tanks are slighy overstocked & yet, the fish are healthy & happy. Every tank has a UGF! So, who are the posers slamming down the UGF hard like a bunch of zealots? I can tell you this. You won't find them on YT. Nor will you find them in real life. It's only in *online forum boards* where all of them congregate & unfortunately, troll! There is NO tangible evidence on part of these naysayers to suggest that the UGF does not work when, instead we can see an overwhelming number of undisputed proof that it actually does! So, who are these posers? They are just a bunch of internet edgelords with zero experience when it comes to UGFs; who yak on the same old regurgitated myths just so that they can hate on something. A very sick internet culture, if you asked me. And you're absolutely right! If they could enjoy more success than failures in this hobby, then we've got ourselves a new generation of experts in the making; just like those before us. And where did they start? UGFs. And box filters. Stuff works! So should these new kids on the block do too. And perhaps the best thing about these old-school "bubbler-type" filters is that in the event of a power cut, all one has to do is hook on a battery-powered air-pump & the filter continues to run! No fuss, no panic. Try that on a motorised power-filter! All you will see is a stressed out fishkeeper going, "Oh, God! Oh, no! Jesus Christ!" 😣😵 God: "Get a UGF..." 💁 🤣🤣🤣 Sorry, theists. Just joking but you get the idea, right? Simple is best. And I'm happy to see more people giving UGFs a go. As you said it, we can't depend on a retailer to tell us what is good or bad because in their eyes? Anything that yields the most profit is good! Sure, to them it's good but we are the hobbyists - custodians of our captive collection. The latter very often requiring modest demands to thrive, not a chock-full of unnecessary products on the market out there; a dizzying array at that. I liken a UGF to an introvert. It's quiet. Hidden. Seemingly doing nothing. It's performance, however is undeniable. That's what matters: stable aquarium conditions. And lastly, contrary to the myths the UGF isn't at all old-fashioned. In fact? The UGF has come a long way since it's predecessors (just Google Image search 'Hobby Gully Filters') & you'll see a green colored aquarium fossil - I still have those too! Lol! 🤣

For turts. Up the power on the lift. Drop a hallow or 2 down a funnel at the down. Turn everything off. Syphon once settled.

Yeah having two filters to rely upon definitely makes it easier to sleep at night or to travel away from the tank on vacation.

What UGF are you using with the sand?

I have also considered doing a reverse flow undergravel filter but haven’t had the tank to try it in yet. I want to do it and have to equipment to, but haven’t yet.

It is also good to hear that you enjoyed the video and found the defense adequate. You mentioned earlier that you liked the thumbnail, which one was it? The every man’a filter or the current on. I am going back and forth on which one I like more.

I know someone that has always used reverse flow UG in planted tanks. I can put you in touch...........LOL :)

@@AussieAquatic 🤣🤣I love you Colin....🤣🤣 I would have no idea who that is? 🤷🤔 I believe my research on the reverse flow led me to meeting one of my favorite people in the whole wide world🤗🙏🙌 I hope you're having a great day!!💚🌿🐟🌿

@@TheAquariumLibrary I've been trying to figure out which one I like the best 🤔🤣 I'm having a hard time picking which one was the best 🤣🙏 awesome 💚🌿🐟🌿

I’m glad you enjoyed the video George! What made you change from undergravel filters to the canister filters?

You’re welcome. Glad you enjoyed it. Do you use an UGF?

I'm sorry to hear that you were never able to learn from him his tricks to using UGF. I am actually setting up a new tank in the near future utilizing a UGF system talked about by Dr. Kevin Novak here on youtube and that very well might be a very similar set up to what your dad used. His videos would be worth a watch if you haven't seen them. Though if you thought this video was long winded, I don't know what you will think of his, as they are mostly as long if not longer than this one. lol

@@TheAquariumLibrary Thanks for getting back. I have watched some of kevin's videos and you are correct, he does make it look like you get right to the point, HA. I am considering setting up a tank following his directions. Unfortunately I retired recently and moved from 3600 square foot house to my cottage which is about a third of the space. I have three tanks running now, not quite begging space to install number four, but that may be required?

Thank you!

They are amazing filters. That is for sure.

It was quite the fun video to make and I hope to make some more in the future

I am glad to here you found the video informative and as unbiased as possible. I think that an UGF should be able to handle those larger fish without a problem. I have seen people utilize UGF in pond set ups with much success. I haven’t watched his videos on the subject matter because I don’t have space for larger tanks but Kevin Novak’s videos might be informative to help you create larger scale systems utilizing UGF. I think with larger systems like you are detailing the trouble will be finding UGF “plates” that are larger enough but that will just require some clever thinking and seeing what other materials you have around. Hope it works out well and if you have any other questions, let me know and I’ll try my best to help!

I’m glad you enjoyed it! Are you currently using UGF?

@@TheAquariumLibrary Yes, I just put one in my frog tank and I love it!

@@TheAquariumLibrary Also, I have a question that I hope you can help me with. I have an American bullfrog and her tank has only 5 to 6 inches of water in it. I want to put an UGF in her tank, so do you think the uptake tubes will work properly if I cut them down in height to sit beneath that low of a water level?

@@f8nomore If you cut the uptake tubes they will still work properly. Probably work better because the air might not be able to lift the water that high above the water level without them being cut.

Haha. That’s actually a really good pun. I’m glad it was an insightful video and it definitely feels more “built-in” than other filters.

Exactly.

Solids are actually a lot more resilient than that and are swept away at the slightest current. I've seen solids accumulating around air stones where they aren't strong enough to move the solids even though the solids are 5 inches away.

Yeah I’ve heard that same thing from a lot of people. I think UGF are making a resurgence and will start seeing more of them in usage as they do a great job with the tank. What type of cichlids were you keeping with that tank?

@@TheAquariumLibrary at the time I was lucky it was around 1990 and I had community tanks. my neighbor built a fish pond in his front yard. I did not really know him but liked fish so I walked over to check it out. Come to find out the dudes dad and him owned a huge comet gold fish farm!! the pond was just to hold feeders. He showed me his tanks, he had 3 huge ones in his living room . like two 500g and an 800 gallon full of Oscars, Jack Dempsey, Dovii etc. I saw one look, and was hooked as a young teen. So I started keeping Oscars and pike cichlid. the pike dug the most but I used the ridged trapaziod type UGF, so it really was not an issue. Even with a hole plenty of water was still flowing though the rocks. ended up moving over seas and that's why I got out but I am coming back :)

Huh. That’s definitely a different way to do UGF

That is a deeper dive into what I was talking about for sure and I agree with you. It definitely is a lot more time to make a UGF work with sand or dirt, but not that much once you know what you need to do, ie all you need is weed fabric.

Haha, you just politely disagree 😂. Do you do reverse flow on all of yours or just regular flow? Or a combination?

@@TheAquariumLibrary Oh no, I don't disagree at all. I think the misunderstanding about UGs, all stems from what the concept of "filter" is. Call them substrate circulation systems, and that's exactly what they are. Water circulation in the substrate. It then happens that the water can be clarified of floating particulate matter and a vigorous beneficial bacterial culture will be established in the enormous surface area of the substrate. I like planted tanks, so I have always run trickle flow in reverse, from the Eheim developed UG system of the 1980's. My plant growth is lush.

@@AussieAquatic Yeah, would also have to agree that a lot of people don't understand what a filter actually is or does. Therefore they don't understand how an undergravel filter works, or a substrate circulation system, which sounds better in my opinion.

Dr. Novak has a ton of info on this.

@@rockfella27 Yup I am familiar with his work

Let’s hope so. I hate to see and hear people struggling with aquariums with all their different products they’ve been sold.

Haha! You can put me on retainer if you want to. I wouldn’t be opposed.

What fish do you keep in your UGF tanks?

But a lot of people don't want to research things thoroughly.

That's very convenient to be able to see to the bottom. I actually don't gravel vac mine at all anymore, just waters changes.

Haha. Appreciate the compliment. Hope you enjoy your UGF!

Keep your eyes peeled for my new video about a DIY UGF coming out in a couple weeks.

I’m glad to hear that you enjoy it. I hate that people just bash to bash on UGF and there isn’t any other voices saying hold on, let me tell you something slightly different. Wow, that sounds like a dream tank. A 125 planted with some inexpensive filtration options on it. What plants do you have in it?

Unbelievable!

Excellent pun good sir.

Yeah I think the companies leaned in the whole idea that UGF aren’t cool but canister filters that are 10x the cost are super cool!