Mini Canister Has Anyone Used Them

[bigfish1]

Iam looking to pick one up from the dr.fosters site. Going to use it to filter about 1.5 galons in a small frog vivarium. Just wanted some.feed back if any one has used themThank you

[Vallisneria]

I tried it. It was ok but I didn't really like it and stop using it after a couple months.

I tried it on 2 different tanks. A 5g and a 20g. I also tried to make a vivarium in the 5g and the canister didn't work for that. I found the water level had to be filled right up to the top of the tank for the canister to work properly. Even if the water level was a couple inches lower then the top the little canister didn't have enough juice to pump it up the intake that far. In the 20g it worked ok as the tank was filled to the top but I found it was a pain to clean and get primed again. Eventually sold it at the auction.

Depending on what you want to do in your vivarium you'd probably be better off getting a small internal filter like a elite mini or some of those made for little betta tanks.

[blink]

I had a zoo-med 501 and tried using it in a 12 gallon Edge. It didn't work for me and was a real pain to set up but that was due to how I wanted to hide it, the filter itself seemed fine and appeared to move enough water to keep things happy

[bigfish1]

Good to know about the water level. I plan on drilling the back of a 12"x18" zilla tank. Water level should only be about 5 inches.

Thanks for the input.

[cainechow]

That is interesting that you had problems with the pump having enough juice to pump. I thought the deal with canisters is that, once primed, they are a closed loop of water and because of that you don't have to worry about air pressure differentials, if your pump runs it should flow shouldn't it?