External upgrade

[turbo200]

Personally if you decide to upgrade from 2 to 1 I'd go for a boimaster or eheim. I'd have to ask why you think you need even more filtration tho?

I've got a FX4 but seems a bit all flow and no go - The size of the pipes is a pain you cant get inline heaters, nor use nice glassware and I definitely have to maintain it more than I did the Betta choice filter I had on the tank previously as the "smart pump" drops the flow down.

Example of what I mean,

Fluval FX4 for up to 1000l is 2650l per hour, 30W

Eheim Pro 1200XL for up to 1000l is 1700l per hour, 25W

Biomaster 850 for up to 850l is 1550l per hour, 32W

I'm just not sure why the Fluval needs to do a extra 1000l of flow for similar total volume! - My BBA seemed to really like all that extra flow mind.... not so much the plants nearby!

You'll probably also find the flow is just "too much" in terms of plants although I think most fish will be fine, even my large discus aren't blown about! It just seems the boimasters/eheim seem to manage to filter the same size tanks without all the turbulence.

I'm not saying its bad obviously I'd had a FX4 on the tank now for probably 10months or more, it still works fine and keeps on-top of the tank although is noticeably better if I clean it out every month rather than leave it a few and the flow stays up!

If I was buying again I probably would of gone for the biomaster with the pre filter and heater just being additional positives...although if i'm totally honest, I may have saved a load of cash and just gone for a betta choice 2000 UV or similar as I think the cheaper brands get unfairly knocked by people who've not tried/had them.

I've got 2x 1620 UV's running the mbuna tank - there 2 year old now and never given any trouble, quiet too. 1 used to be on the discus tank prior to upgrading to the FX4 which I only upgraded as one of the BBA myths seems to be you need more flow so I went FX4, seemed to make my BBA worse as it seemed to enjoy the flowier areas!

I was goin down the fx6 route because I thought the 2x406 were u under filtered for the tank but it’s been proven I’m already over filtered so I’m happy with that

[walker26]

Sorry about the quality of the photos but as you can imagine it’s very hard to shift a 340L aquarium full of water on an oak cabinet, so I couldn’t slide it out very far.

If I remember correctly I used 25mm equal Y connectors, 25-16mm reducing connectors on one side and I think it was 25-20mm on the other side. The areas of 16mm and 20mm hose added together gave a similar area to 25mm hose and so similar flow.

So I split the original Fluval single hose to 2x25mm hose then reduced one side to 16mm hose and the other to 20mm hose, fitted the accessories in line then reversed the split back to the original Fluval single 25mm hose.

I hope that might be helpful to anyone who might want to fit accessories to FX filters.