Pepere

The air collar of the Easy Flow kit will fit decent on a medium sized Lee’s Triple flow filter. the large would need an adapter.

Well my Elodia is planted in maybe an inch of sand with no root tabs and I pull gobs of it out every week… Based on my experience I would not be suspecting the substrate is the limiting factor yours is experiencing… I built up the terrace on this tank as it was originally on top of a stand next to my recliner and it allowed me to look up the slope at it… but now it is on lower level of a 2 tier stand.

Well, it could mean you have extremely hard water…. Or it could mean the test chemical is defective. I have seachem equilibrium on hand so If I had thise results I would get some distilled water and test it with the api test kit, and then I would add a measured amount of equilibrium to give me an expected hardness and then use the api test kit to verify. ie distilled should change on the first drop. 15 ml of Equilibrium should raise 20 gallons of water 2.8 degrees of hardness. 1.5 ml would raise 2 gallons 2.8 degrees. 1.5 ml would raise 1 gallon 5.6 degrees. 1.5 ml would raise a quart 22.4 degrees… maybe 1.5 milligrams in a quart of distilled left to fully dissolve and do a 50 % dilution . Ie 1 cup of mixed with 1 cup distilled and mix and take 5 mls of that to do an api drop test to verify test drops are good… so, I am assuming this is your tap water.. do you have known hard water? Li e deposits on plumbing fixtures? Soap doesnt suds up and hard to rinse off? Shower head needs frequent servicing to clean out to get a decent shower?

During waterchange you can see the Easy Flow kit on my UGF gives about 5 inches of head. Plain air risers with Ziss airstones give about 1 1/2 inches of head.

Fish that develop difficulty swimming or maintaining orientation do not suffer with it long in the wild. They become prey very quickly. I have taken such fish and put them in hospital tanks to try to treat with aquarium salt and antibiotics to give it a chance at recovery. I havent had any success with that. I don’t feel I did those fish any favors.

I bought a ugf pennplax filter plate for a 15 gallon tank. I used 1 of the plates. i tried different plastic round container lids to find one about the right size of the flat round bottom of my sphere to use as a template. I laid it on top of a corner of the ugf and used a bandsaw to cut it out. This is the remainder. Yes there are two flat spots in the back corner and yes the plates are open around the cut out, but I doubt it interferes…

Well, I only have the aquasoil on that side of the tank. It is not the reason for the hill, but it worked out that way… on the lower level it is a sand substrate… The only thing growing on that low side is Elodia… the Pink Flamingo crypt certainly appears to appreciate the aquasoil…. I have retrenched that back several times…. It keeps coming back thick…

15 hours later… Before fitting the easy flow kit, the bubbles simply came out of the elbows on the air riser tube and popped on the surface. There was no flow velocity carrying them. photo above taken with canister filter unplugged and hence no flow coming out of the spray bar.

I thought some people might like to see how I retrofitted some Easy Flow kits to my UGF plates. The first step was going to the hardware store to find some fittings that might work. These 3/4 threaded adapter will fit just fine once the threads are filed down.. The air riser tube from the UGF is a loose fir. A little polyurethane sealant will take care of that one… The fittings are 69 cents each. with the fitting secured in the vice 5 or so minutes quickly files down the threads. rest fitting shows how much to trim down. snug but not overly tight fit. I used the vice to press fit the collar onto the adapter. It can come off by hand and the collar shows no sign of deformation. I cut off bit of the solvent fit edge as well. About 1/2 an inch of gluing surface. I cut two 1 1/2 inch section of air riser tube and deburred. You can see it will never work as friction fit. I applied a little 3M 4200 polyurethane sealant witha q tip and then fitted the air riser tubes and cleaned up squeeze out. I will let these sit overnight before fitting them in my tank tomorrow and fitting the easy flow kit on them. At most I may have spent a half hour on this.. the photos and typing of this post probably took longer.

I have bags of aquasoil capped with coarse sand or gravel over ugf. I will occasionally place root tabs on top of some of the bags with the thought of helping to replenish them…. I dont know that it hurts or helps.. I also use Easy Green holding my nitrates around 20 ppm with weekly 50% water changes and pressurized co2. regardless things seem to be growing well…

I have no doubt a lager diameter air collar that is made for the size of the UGF air risers would flow even better. Small increases in pipe lumen diameter significantly increases cross section percentages. But until that is available for sale, this simple cheap mod dramatically increases flow through the UGF.

I just installed an easy flow kit on to my Undergravel Filter plate in my 17 gallon fish bowl sphere. @Cory I used a 3/4 female solvent weld to 3/4 threaded adapter from Home depot for $2.00 and change. i cut all but 1/4 inch of the threaded section off the fitting and then used a file to file down the threads evenly around it to make a snug fit on the Easy Flow air collar. I then cut off all but 1/2 inch of the solvent weld side of the adapter to shorten it. I cut of an 1 1/2 of my original UGF riser tube. It fits loosely in the pvc fitting. I used 3M 4200 polyurethane sealant to glue the original ugf air riser stub in the fitting and used q tips to wipe up squeeze out and make sure it was smooth and neat looking and allowed the sealant to cure overnight. Next morning I removed the original air riser and replaced with my adapeter and Easy Flow kit. The increase in flow is astonishing… I will be buying several more kits to adapt all of my UGFs to them now that proof of concept has proven itself.