nabokovfan87

It does! All the fancy clip things aren't in the manual, at least not clearly. I've seen reports that initially you can use the clips, but over time it'll leak and it's best to secure the lid properly then latch it. The main thing for me is to feel confident that it's not going to leak on me.

If only it was horizontal! 😍

I think you can basically swap tubing only if you really wanted to. 16-22mm would be the one you use (or 5/8") I am leaning towards stainless pipes because anything glass I tend to break when I remove the tubing. I had it happen on the co2 diffuser and now I'm worried about it. I don't know how to attach it to the tank though, not much is designed for a rimmed 75G aquarium. Rimless fancy scape tank... oh yeah, but a rimmed tank, not much. aquavitro has some, but no LFS here. 😞

😂 Step 1, replace the snails with a clown pleco! Hopefully she enjoys it. She's still recovering!!!!

Ultimately I was between two filters and went with this one because of the design of the valve. I can pretty easily detach things and then move the canister where I need to for the sake of changing equipment out. I've picked out some pipes, but I don't think I will be able to find a spraybar that "fits" apart from this one. Fingers crossed I end up with a cohesive filter in the end that I'm not worried I will flood the room with! Finding a spraybar for a 4ft tank isn't easy. FX one has the right pieces, but it's the wrong size. For the 07 series, the out of the box one fits 36" tanks, but you'd have to buy two kits and cut it apart to fit this one.... and that's assuming that the bar fits with whatever other attachment things are in place. My thought right away after being done, apart from leaving the room to breathe, was just wishing I had considered other things more. I knew I was going to have to swap parts out and I wasn't really sure either one really fits my needs. It's been on my mind this week about how much of the hobby results in having to fix things yourself or becomes a designer. For instance, just to have a lid on the tank. I'm not really sure why that is the norm. It's a bit weird for sure. I am waiting for the tubing to come into stock then I'll get the new pipes and go from there.

ORD but you deserve an award for sure. Nice work! Rules for the shrimp tank you say?

I wanted to open this before anything and give a pretty clear disclaimer up front. I am just someone who enjoys looking at how things work, especially filtration, and trying to understand what makes them good or bad. I don't thing there is any perfect filter out there. That being said, I do think I can provide a little bit of contest here with some design choices and why things were done a certain way. (potentially) The setup here is a Fluval 407, designed for ~50-100G applications, and installed on a standard aqueon 75G aquarium. Let's start there, "designed for a 50G up to a 100G". Logically you would go down the road of standard, popular sizes with those being a 55G, 60B, 75G, 90G aquariums. I would also expect this to work on a 40B aquarium. That leads to every tank being.... 4 foot long at minimum. This is one of our biggest design considerations here. The only 3 foot tank in that range is a 65G. All things considered, it's relatively a longer tank than any of the other x07 series have to deal with. I went to the shop and tried to use my coupons / price match to lower the price. It wasn't cheap, but it was about what you would expect the price to be. The store in questions sells the filters, one on the shelf at a time, and any of the accessories or products that go with them are not available at all in the store. My first impression of the filter is absolute concern because I am walking to the checkout and I feel it shifting in the box. I don't know why, but the canister itself is sliding around. When the time comes I get the box open and I'm pretty confused. I see about 6 pieces of tape I have to cut open with indications that it's been opened (security markings). Left side of the box has 2 small items and the container itself is to the right. All I can see is a 1" piece of styrofoam. The foam is on the top of the canister to keep it from "jumping" up, but there is nothing in there to keep it from sliding to and fro. Why, no idea. Step 1, I would love to see them design packaging that works for the items inside. I get the canister out of the box and I proceed to disassemble everything. The goal being to remove the filter media and get an idea of what is in there, how much, and what I need to pull or find to fill up the canister. I pull the carbon out and the phosphate pads because I don't plan to use them. That being said the carbon provided is not enough. There's 4 small bags. I emphasize the word small. In each tray I am pretty sure I could fit all of the carbon provided in one tray with the phosphate pads. I am not saying I want them to add more, I am saying that the bags provided are designed for a smaller canister and they just put more of them in this version of it. I would expect 2 sets of phosphate pads or even ammonia pads in there as well. If you notice, you have 1 of each "type" of media products that fluval sells so that you as the consumer can get used to using them. It's an introduction so to speak. The media in there, biological, it's extremely poor quality tubes of ceramic and it's not even what fluval sells off the shelf. I honestly think they are on v3 of their ceramic media with the new one being released quite recently. Media provided in the filter, you can see there isn't enough because they had to go to the store and buy more. (top cavity = provided media, bottom cavity is a mix of the product below) Version 2 of their media. Version 3 (new one) Much like the box..... you're stocking too many part numbers and too many products when you just need one, at most two (small and large size). Fluval needs to get with the program and update their product line with improved media. More importantly, provide more. If you were tracking along with the process that gives me 4 trays in total. 1 filled with foam, 2 empty, and 1 half full. This is not a cheap product, a lot of canisters don't come with anything, but I think it's more frustrating to expect to have media in your filter and to have 75% of the filter chambers empty. With the trays out of the way I went to pull what fluval terms the prefilter. This is not a prefilter because it's inside the filter, but I have heard them refer to it as this in their video content about the product. What caught my eye is that the bottom of the white foam (near the trays) was rolled up and it wasn't sitting the way it should. I took that off, flipped the orientation so the rolled edge was at the top pointing away from the trays and then tried to insert the tray again without the trays to rub on the foam. When I did this, again, the foam rolled up on the bottom of the holder and was out of place. This is a pretty silly design issue and it just means that tolerances weren't considered. My advice if you own one is to go ahead and make sure that you verify the foam is actually installed right at the base, then drop the trays in. This design issue applies to every single x07 filter in the series as they all use the same design. It's likely due to draft and just the foam being slightly too big for the cavity (high side of the tolerance). With everything removed, lets look at how this thing actually is intended to work and talk about what is in each tray for me. You can see the pipe pushing water into the canister here and it's at an angle, pushing the flow into one of the corners of the foam. This is another thing that is a bit weird to me. I have seen videos showing that flow goes through both foams, but I would argue that it doesn't. As the blue foam is clogged it will go into the white foam. This also means there is nothing in the canister itself to stop bypass apart from the directionality of the flow. There is a small rib on the bottom of the lid which divides the cavity along that red holder for the foams, but yes, there is some bypass inherent to the design here. At the bottom of the prefilter holder there is a little gap and that leads into the bottom layer of the media baskets. One thing I did notice is that I wasn't quite happy with the grid sections on the media trays. They do deflect, the material is slightly thin, and I wouldn't be surprised that over time, someone could break a grate or two pretty easily. Cleaning media, using the tray to do so, I would prefer to have a slightly thicker material on the trays. this is a weird issue from a design perspective because that actually improves part quality for a lot of your injection molded designs. These trays are injection molded. What this means is that there is a cross-section somewhere of a rib that is very thin (center brace where the red handle goes) and that dictates the rest of the thickness of the part. I would like to see future designs have this modified and to see it about 15% thicker on those bottom grates. Beyond that, the trays are seemingly fine. My only real gripe is that the placement of the handle splits the tray into two sections. There isn't really any reason for this. We have a flat side, the trays can be thick enough to be supported if designed correctly. It means that I ended up not wanting to deal with bagging media because I just don't really want to use 6-8 media bags for this filter. I think I have enough on hand, but it's not worth it. With something like fine media, you can bag it if need be. For my setup, Top down: -Top Tray: Cycled, running media from existing filter -2nd Tray: biological media -3rd Tray: Foam / fine pad -4th Tray: "Mech" type of media used to settle large particles and calm flow. The goal here is to have very fine foam in that 2nd to the bottom tray and to keep the media itself very clean. I placed the lid on the canister and I had a really weird experience trying to install the o-ring into place. Initially it was in the wrong spot, I fixed that, but I was a bit confused why that o-ring wasn't on the canister itself. The lid is pretty flat and it would be easy to have that designed in that way. I also had a heck of a time trying to get the lid on/off the canister after this point. I never felt like the lid was easy to key into place and I had to press down to get the lid to fit tightly and seal properly. It takes some getting used to. I don't think I'll ever be comfortable with that process. The gap / play on the clips that secure the lid down tightly is very loose that that always makes me question whether or not it's actually installed all the way or securely clipped. When I wanted to first check things internally on the canister I had to remove the tubing by cutting off the flow (works very well using a simple valve) and then unplug the canister and move it to a location where I could spill some water. I kid you not.... I had to look up a video on HOW to open the stinking thing. I read the directions and was confused. I checked online and found out that the clips on the lid actually create the leverage you need to slide the lid open. Ingenious and so beginner friendly! Why isn't this indicated clearly or on the canister itself! You can literally print those directions on the clips. With all of the setup out of the way I tried to finalize placement and proceed to assemble the input and output. This is when all of my frustration set into place. There is a few key things on here and basically I was glued to the above page for a solid hour trying to get everything set into place. I started with a small sidetable to give the filter enough height. On the above sheet you can see the requirement of "MAX 4.5 ft" for the base of the canister to the height of the tank. It can be installed on the floor and eventually will be. Requirement: 4.5 ft MAX (54 inches) Tank height: 21.5 inches Stand height: 28 inches Tank height: 49.5 inches I pried open the plastic clips to the rear of the tank and was pretty terrified that I was going to break them when installing them. This is a feeling that you never want the customer to have. You can the parts in the product to work, work well, and you want to remove the need to replace things due to damage from shipping or installation. Those two areas are the highest cost of a product because it means it's a warranty replacement. I got them over the rim, no damage, and proceeded to install the suction cups. There was no way to install the clips with the suction cups installed. It might be a bit hard to see but I've run into several issues. The biggest one being that these clips will not and do not fit a tank of this size. They might work on a 55 (thinner plastics) but they do not fit on a 75G aquarium. Now we need to add some sort of input/output pipe holder as a secondary cost. Let's discuss the various reasons why. There's a few things going on here, but essentially the rear suction cups outside of the tank don't fit because of that gap between the thicker plastic rim and the glass. It's physically not possible because the part itself is too short for this tank. This is another holdover from canister parts used in smaller models of this design that simply do not function in this larger situation for this specific iteration of the canister. In the second photo above with the blue dimension we have a pretty wide (front to back) rim compared to just about every other tank, but it's pretty standard for things above a 55G. Certain HoBs don't fit and the gap between how wide this rim is causes you to have to really open up those plastic clips. I was able to get the internal suction cups attached to the glass. There is essentially one suction cup and the tubing itself holding everything into place. Again, going back to that distance for how big the rim is, you have to have the tubing go back against the glass and be able to curve inward a little bit to do so. The result of all of these fitment issues is: The tubes are angled, so your going to have connections at an angle. the leftmost one here is the output and only held into place due to the spraybar (added item, not in the original packaging). This also means that the suction cup to hold the intake onto the glass doesn't work. Fluval also does not have a prefilter available, and this is the thinnest possible prefilter that will fit this intake. It pretty much ensures that there is no way to hold the input pipe into place. In all, this is very poor quality and I am not sure why this is such an issue. It's a compounding issue of 3-4 parts that just don't fit and that results in what amounts to a failure of design in my installation case. Note, the prefilter has a "narrow side" and a thicker side, but neither side will fit and allow the tube to be clipped into place. I have seen others show this issue and I have even seen some users clip the hose way up by the holders where the grey rubber pieces attach. This is for a 55G+ size tank intended for some pretty big fish. It's a bit unfortunate that this is the standard and hasn't really been improved upon in the 4th generation of this filter. Step 2: Fix the issues with parts not fitting. Step 3: I really want to see fluval design a prefilter that works. To close things out I will make 2 very critical notes here. I have no way to properly support the input and output pieces. The intake piece that is provided with the filter is an absolute JOKE and it quickly led to water shooting up into the air. It was held in place by one suction cup and some very cheap plastic clips. I seriously recommend that fluval redesign these in a few ways. I would start with the pieces that are on the FX series of canisters and modify those designs to fit on this series of filters. A single small output jet of water in a tank of this size, not being able to control direction (due to things not securely attached) led to near floods. A fish bumps that and all I am doing is draining the tank at that point. A very serious design failure again, in my view. 407 output. (very small, single jet of water) FX series (more adjustable) Another note I will add here is that the tubing itself on the filter is extremely rigid and due to things not being securely held in place I am at the whim of the tubing for how things fit. It's not easy to bend. It's not easy to shape. It doesn't want to hold it's shape. It also holds junk in the lines due to all of the internal ridges and it does lead to stress points all along the tubing. If you step on it, it's going to crack. If you let it get brittle over time, it can likely crack when you do your maintenance. Unfortunately this means that you might want to replace that tubing every few years in the same way you replace airline tubing as it hardens. One final note from a design perspective is the reason why things are designed the way they are. The connections on everything are basically inside of the tank at all times. The connections on the tubing are not permanent and they are done this way to make it "easy" for a beginner to be able to install the items themselves. They will leak if you try to attach them to lily pipes or avoid using the tank rim tubing holders. Essentially, any time you have a connection of the pipe and the rubber fittings, that's done inside of the tank and there is absolutely a reason for that. I hope these photos and thoughts help someone and help you to decide if this filter is for you. Lastly, here's a video showing the flow across the tank and what you can expect to see. Edit: one thing I completely forgot to mention was a caryrrying handle. I'm not sure why any canister filter doesn't include this, especially when it's clearly stated not to hold the filter by certain pieces and parts. This could so easily be integrated into the mold and added with very little real cost on the end. As mentioned before about the clips, mark it clearly too!

Best of luck @Steel-W0LF !

Yes that looks pretty serious. I would think it's a tumor, fluid, or something. I would remove the fish now to a QT setup. CC @Colu what does this look like to you?

Have you considered doubling the group size?

There is a lot to digest here and it's a little tough to say what is really going on. First, you have slow growing plants (lots of ferns and anubias) and that does play a role. You'd want to see some nitrate so those plants have what they need. You can turn down the light if you notice them getting a lot of algae too. I had experienced in my own tank that because the fish were in there, the shrimp were afraid to get food out of the dish. You can try feeding them at night and maybe that helps a little bit. That being said, it's tough. The bug bites and those things, when you're feeding the fish normally it would mean that some of that goes to the shrimp. You very likely will rarely need to feed the shrimp as a result of this, at least until you see the colony double or triple in size. Feeding them where they do tend to congregate is a good idea as well! The filter seems to be the setup where I would run one on each side of the tank and be ok. As long as you're not seeing something like ammonia or nitrite, then you should be ok with what you currently have. adding an airstone on the other side, maybe that just helps overall. If you notice the shrimp only staying around where the airflow is, then that usually indicates they may want more air to feel comfortable exploring other parts of the tank. If you do end up with two sponges in there, you can also alternate the week(s) that you clean them. That should be more than adequate. Does this look the same as your tap water or very different?

I would use more of a traditional stem. Bacopa caroliniana is a pretty solid one. Pearlweed, even something like val can fit that role pretty well. PSO is a massive plant. Something like the normal pogostemon or dassen coloration should give you a similar affect without the size of the plant being as much of an issue. pogostemon erectus is another good sized one. Hydrocotyle species also work. (and make a pretty beautiful carpet) My go-to fast growing plant is honestly just moss though.

So let's take a deep breath and double check what we need to double check. First thing we must do is make sure they have a complete food. Calcium aside, there are other minerals and things your shrimp need to molt and develop properly. This matters a lot moreso for things like developing young shrimp as opposed to just the adults. Adults in a new environment it also matters a bit moreso than ones you've bred and raised yourself. I have info from some shrimp breeders where they have used veggie versions of cichlid food as a staple for their breeding tanks. That being said, making your own food is perfectly fine, but for now, given the issues you're experiencing, let's isolate food and nutrients as another variable. Hikari has a pretty good shirmp food as well as a few others. Nordic is available, looks really good, and is pretty affordable as well. You can even try something like discus food from hikari. A GH/KH kit is under $10 usually and it's been a monumental tool for me keeping shrimp. Once you have those values for your tank and tap, please share and we can go from there. The other key thing to track here is going to be nitrates and keeping them lower if you continue to experience issues. (nitrates from waste specifically). If you have nitrates only from your fertilizer, those are generally acceptable up into the 30's without issues. You mentioned earlier about changing 10% of the water. My suggestion would be to change at minimum 20% if you can. I recommend only doing that at minimum every 2 weeks. If you change it any more often, that results in some issues with molting and their schedule. Based on the photo it looks like you're close to that already. The main reason for this is because it's slightly important to remove nitrates / waste as much as it is to replace that with fresh clean water. If you don't remove enough, you end up with OTD (old tank syndrome). That, for shrimp, can be pretty detrimental and lead to some issues like exactly what you're seeing. I'm not saying that's guaranteed what this is, but it's a potential explanation. One final note here, if you can, add an airstone. It helps with their immune system and just their general overall health. Let's also just verify filtration to see if there's anything there. As a sidenote... are you able to change the power level on the light?

Grids should be easy to print as it does provide a structure for the print to support itself. Holes and slots work too because they also support themselves. In terms of the overall structure, I would keep in mind a few things. Internal vs. External cavities. Some of your design has very thin sections, but your filtration is likely best kept rectangular with known dimensions. Say, 0.5-1" minimum gaps. Anything smaller you'd want to just fill in and treat as visual and not intended for your filtration. That gives you an idea of what the lids need to cover (or where the rim on the lids need to meet) as well as if your filtration has a good setup for flow. Small holes can be added for flow but keep in mind your ability to clean those holes. Especially running botanicals and things that would have chunky particles.

I spent last night doing research... More of it. For some reason I had in my mind that these were ~2" fish. Very beautiful, very cool shape and size for what I want. The problem I read into is.that they can breed very easily. For me specifically, that can lead to an issue. Shrimp breeding I can handle a little easier than something like fish going into the 100s in a few months. Ultimately, just not the right species for me at this point in time.... But one day, definitely going to have some.

I just needed to take a second and highlight this. This entire mindset is the entire focus of the hobby for me. There's always going to be things I want to rush and things I wish I could, but patience (and stability) is critical and leads to the most success for you and those inside the tank. I don't want to have a very long post with a lot of tips and tricks, especially for what you're dealing with right now. My advice is to just let the tank do it's thing for at least a month. In terms of ferts, 20 ppm is where I keep my stuff at. Things get higher and I do a water change. Right now you're "practicing" and you can be doing normal maintenance like you would for any tank that is cycled and has been setup. Check the filter once a week. Scrape the glass. Add a small pinch of food every few days and your normal plant ferts once a week. Dial in the lighting intensity and just observe what the plants do. I wouldn't do anything more complicated or excessive than that. What plants are under the wood in the middle there? Anything like anubias and java fern you'd want to make sure the rhizome is not buried in the substrate. As far as indications of health of the tank I would use the val in the background. It should generally be the quickest growing, easier plant in that setup. Look for shiny new bright green growth on everything. Please enjoy! This was a super helpful video for me, especially when it comes to plant help. In my case, GH:7-8 KH: 3-4. You'll just want to keep an eye on the plants because some get very cranky when things get higher in minerals.

For those who have kept them, do they swim midwater or towards the bottom of the tank at all? For feeding do they eat off the substrate? I am considering some and would potentially like to house them with shrimp. I do not believe I can because I expect they will predate on the baby shrimp. My instinct tells me that they will stay to the top of the tank/upper section, but I am not sure. If you've kept them, please share all the details!

Awesome news.

Do you have other fertilizer available that is more of an all-in-one?

Yeah, due to prefilter and tank rim I specifically need the space off the glass. 😞 If I had a 3d printer it would be easy! I found someone who had to literally make their own for the same exact issue. They ended up using tubing and a small plastic ball in the end.

How big is the tank?

Check to see if someone ran off with it? Should be shiny if it's a new molt.

Essentially you can put the shrimp into a net gently and keep an eye out. Float the net at the top of the tank and if the shrimp molts fully it will be able to get out. Sometimes they get stuck and get attacked and that stress ends with them dying. Whenever I see something like this I do a sanity check and I feed the colony a complete type of food with calcium/minerals. What is your GH and KH in the tank? How is filtration setup? When was the last water change and how was that water change completed? How much water was changed? Did anything else change recently on the tank?

I found these from UNS. I've emailed them asking for a part number and dimensions. I am unsure if the part is available for sale though. Short vs. long version. It exists!

Hello Everyone, I'm trying to find parts that work and fit my tank. I have a new intake pipe and unfortunately it's basically unable to be mounted properly because the piece in the kit isn't designed for the gap on my rim and this tank setup. Does anyone know of a holder that is similar in design, but has a longer stem? This dimension here.... just 2-3x longer.