Ok peeps...here's the deal...

175galon (650 liter) tank...running with 2 Eheim 2217 classic filters.

Have two dilemmas/questions

A) They are positioned at the back corners of my tank...so do i use one filter for bio and one for mechanical filtration. Or go bio/mac in both of them...

What filter media do i use? I'm sure there's other stuff out there that's just as effective biological and mechanical as the stuff Eheim sells at reduced prices.

Please helppppppppppppp

u can use both in eachof them. I run 3 rena xp3 and I only use mechanical and bio i all three. I have the bottom with coarse sponges, middle full of bio (ceramic rings or bio wheels) and the top with a tray full of more bio. I also did add a finer sponge to the top of one of my trays, that set up works great for me!

if it was me i'd set them both up with bio and mechanical, have a nice thick course sponge at the bottom, all your selected bio media in the middle (ceramic rings or bio balls) and a fine white polishing pad on the top. Alos i'd put both out puts at one end and the intakes at the other to make a nice cross tank current which would help pick up all the bits of crap in the tank.

bigtdotcom wrote:


sounds good advice to me. pretty much the same as i do. i run 2 filters, mainly for 2 reasons. 1st is if one goes wrong i have a second back. this would only work if both filters are packed with media. 2nd is I like to keep my water particle free(I hate seeing small bits) i get away without polishing pads because I have a high turn over of water.

You definitely need biological filtration in both of your filters. Having no biological filtration inside the filter renders it pretty useless when it comes to maintaining your aquarium properly.

I actually did the opposite. I have it spread out with my intake to insure I do not have and dead spots, I have mine set up alternating. At the far left I have output, then intake, then output, then intake at the far right side.

It works good for me that way. an it seems like we all agree, coarse on bottom, bio in middle, fine sponge on top. But me being HUGE on bio media, I also have more bio in the top tray, you cant have too much! and then I topped that off with the fine sponge, that works perfectly fine. You dont have to put just one kind in a tray, adding bio with mechanical will be fine, just be sure on the top one that you put the fine sponge on TOP of the bio, if thats what you choose to do. I also kept nothigng but coarse sponge on the bottom, no bio there.

Acapella.Foxxy wrote:


i really don't like being called a marshmellow, lol,