Originally Posted by
Fish Finatics
I see you are waiting for a reply...... To be brief a bit about myself.... I have about 40 years in the hobby. I keep a 200 gal. coral reef system, four discus planted aquariums, an African Rift Lake Ccichlid tanks and a few other assorted freshwater tanks. I am what you call a glutten for punishment.
To be quite honest, I HATE Fluvals since they were redesigned a few years ago. There is way too much bypass. They lost pumphead pressure. They do not really do an effective job of breaking down organics because of the bypass. As a result they get dirty quickly and require frequent aggressive media rinsing in used tank water ONLY. Their sponges only trap wastes where the divider allows the water to freely pass through. The nice thing about Fluvals is that you can easily buy Fluval spray bars for their outputs. Dollar for dollar I'd take the no bypass Marineland C-Series canister filters over a fluval any day of the week except the intakes and outputs on the Marinelands leave a lot to be desired but then again, so do the Fluvals but at least you can put a spray bar on them, you can't with the Marinelands. If you really have to go with Fluvals I would be inclined to rec. one 405 and a real aggressive power filter such as an Aqueon 55 or Marineland Emp. 400 for your mechanical filtration.
Have Fun