If i were you i would use two power heads one at either ed of the tank.I believe there are power heads that are reverse flow but im sure that you could adapt most of the ordinary ones anyway. Most outlets on p'heads are round and so its just a case of getting some different sizes of tubing so that the outlet fits to your inlet tube.

Hi there,

First of all, I have to confess a few things.

1) I did buy Oscars as an impulse buy, not knowing what i was doing and what I was getting into.

2)I am new to the whole fish keeping thing, and have very little knowledge of.....well just about anything, but I am learning all the rime.

Now that I have got that off my chest and everyone knows I am a complete noobie to this, I shall proceed with my questioning.

One thing I have noticed, and now been told by many fish keepers is that Oscars a seriously messy fish, and the black gravel in my tank shows it.

I have been reading the article posted by "dinger 454" about this under gravel filter setup.

I have recently purchased a larger tank 1200 litre capacity which I am collecting this weekend, and it comes with an external filter (the make/model i cannot remember unfortunately). I do also have another external canister filter which is called an "Aqua One Advance 1250" by a company called "Aquis". (http://www.aquaone.co.uk/filter_external.php)

I have looked at under gravel filters but the ones i have seen seem to be much smaller than the width of the tank i have purchased. Are there larger ones available? I think my tank is appx 4ft long.

I understand the idea of reverse flow, but I cannot picture how I would set this system up if my new filter did have a reverse flow feature.

I am sorry for my lack of knowledge but as I said, I am a complete noobie and I would very much like to have my tank set up the correct way from the very start.

Any links or diagrams or even text showing me how to set this system up would be hugely appreciated. Anyone who does reply to this, if you could leave the slang to a minimum it would be ideal because i don’t know what a lot of the terms mean, but I am trying to get to grips with it.

Any advice on the setting up of my tank would be fantastic.

I would like to thank you for your time and efforts in advance for reading my article and especially those who reply.

Many Many Thanks,

Matt.

My tank is 6ft x 2.5 ft. I got several small undergravel filters UGF's and overlapped them and put one uplift tube in. You will then find you have the holes for the other uplift tubes in the rest of the small UGF's, i filled these with aquarium sealant. Bingo, one big UGF plate

You have the external filters inlet in the tank as normal. You then connect the outlet to the one uplift tube that you put in the UGF

You will also need a gravel tidy(a fine sheet that wont let gravel go through), because oscars dig and if they dig down to the UGF then the UGF will not work. You put the plates in place, put a layer of gravel, followed by the gravel tidy followed by more gravel