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A canister aquarium filter is a powerful aquarium filter that can give you different levels of filtration, along with using different media in the process, including mechanical filtration media, biological media that involves using micro-organisms, and also chemical filtration media, if you feel you need them. There are several advantages to using a canister aquarium filter. For one , it needs very low levels of maintenance – a period of months can pass before the media needs a change, and the canister aquarium filter rarely rarely needs any other kind of maintenance.
So what is a canister aquarium filter really like? As the name implies, it uses one or more canisters to hold different filtration media. Some of these filters stack the different media in a single canister, rather like a layer cake, while other models use a separate canister for each kind of media. Generally speaking, the more media the canister aquarium filter holds, the larger the capacity of water that it can process, and the longer it can go without needing a media change. However, remember that the larger the amount of media you have to eventually replace, the more expensive that replacement will be. For this reason it might be worthwhile to shop around a bit to find the right model of canister filter for the tank you have in mind.
The physical filtration media in a canister aquarium filter generally consists of foam pads – these filter out solid particles from the water. After this, the water is routed by the impeller motor to the rest of the filtration media. With each stage in the filtration process the water is further purified until it is 'crystal clear'. Generally speaking, the bio filtration level comes last. This consists of media that houses vast colonies of bacteria. The media that houses the micro-organisms can be of almost any sort, but is usually some sort of ball shape, to provide the greatest surface area for bacterial action.
The canisters usually fit somewhere under the aquarium, and the canisters themselves can be up to fifteen inches long. The lids of the canisters are usually locked shut. Of course the canisters have intake and output vents, and one really needs to connect the hoses correctly to the filter – canister aquarium filters very rarely work correctly if you get the input and outputs wrong. Many canisters have a system whereby any unfiltered water is returned to be filtered at once rather than being returned to the tank. |
