Best Aquarium products

[Guppy Guy]

Sooooooooo. This is a random poll for the best aquarium products. Add any others at the bottom. My favorite overall is seachem prime. Enjoy, and comment on your favorites. Below!

[Kathy F]

My favorite fish food is Omega One.   They use good ingredients for a reasonable cost and are readily available.   I do think some of the brands you listed are better quality over all but I just didn't consider quality but over all practicality.  

[Colu]

My favourite fish food brand is  hikari I like canister filter because it gives the  opinion of using lots of different types of filter media 

[Patrick_G]

My favorite products:

- Aquarium coop coarse sponge as a pre-filter, a air driven filter or stuffed in a HOB. 
-Aquarium Coop Java Moss on mesh

-Aquarium Coop Brine shrimp in the cool metal Murphy can.

 

[Dwayne Brown]

I really like the hikari food brand. As for best filters I think the sponge filter is the best option, the simplicity of it is unparalleled. 

[Scott P.]

I don't have a favorite food but my fish do. Xtreme krill flakes makes them lose their minds.

 

[Atitagain]

Fritz has never let me down and just really haven’t used others much to compare 

xtreme pellets flake and wafers all seem high quality and fish always gobble it up, price is fair, use others but huge fan of xtreme

sponge then canister and HOB all are about equal, sponge gets the nod for ease of cleaning 

[Taco Playz]

My fish really like Hygger tropical fish flakes. They also LOVE frozen brine shrimp. I think tetra Aquasafe is good because it is affordable and has been a really reliable dechlorinator. Lastly my favorite filter is a sponge because though don’t have to buy cartridges every month and cleaning them isn’t too hard. 

 

 

 

[Jungle Fan]

Seachem Prime, quick and easy,

Repashy, and Sera for the fish food,

North Fin, or Hikari for cichlid sinking pellets,

Dennerle for shrimp food,

 a combo for fltration: lava lock below the substrate with deep sea minerals, and bacter,

pre-filter sponge,

and canister filter with another pre-filter, mostly sponge, and one tray of Sera Siporax sintered glass, and loads of plants.

Python water changer with 25 FT extension tube, brass snap connector, faucet pump, and nylon cover with rubber band for refilling.

[cleoismyspiritanimal]

I've only used Seachem Prime so I really don't have anything to compare it to but it works great for me. 

As for food, I feed a variety and am just starting with live baby brine shrimp for guppy fry. They seem to love it (as do the momma guppies). The food brand that I have the most of is Hikari (frozen brine, crab, guppy and shrimp), with Repashy (community plus and super gold) being a close second.  Xtreme Krill flake is loved by all (goldfish, koi, shrimps, snails and guppies).

Filtration varies by tank.  Koi and goldfish tanks each have a hob and a canister while shrimp/snail tank has hob and sponge and guppies just have a sponge filter.  Each seems to work well in the appropriate situation.

Thank you for the fun poll!  I had to go read about trickle/wet dry filters to figure those out. ☺️

[Guppysnail]

Prime. I deal with metals in tap water prime is detoxifying. Owned this house 20 years never had an issue. 
I don’t think any food is the best none have everything to avoid deficiencies I feel variety is best. 
I do not think any filtration is best. It depends on the environment I am setting up as to which is best in each situation. 

[lefty o]

best aquarium product is by a far margin IMO, the Python. i  wouldnt have a larger aquarium without one.

[StevesFishTanks]

I picked other on declor because I use catalytic carbon and other media cartridges to filter my auto watter change water.

when actually using dechlorinator my preferred type is seachem safe

on the food I was torn between frozen and xtreme. what tipped the scale towards frozen was that most of my picky eaters wouldnt turn it down.

I picked sponge because it can be used in all of the filter types listed. I use it as a mattenfilter it lots of my tanks.

[FlyingFishKeeper]

I like API’s mostly since it’s just what I started with, and since it has a really nice cap that’s good plastic, and has measurements in ml labeled on the cap which is really useful. Especially in the small quantities (1 gallon for top offs) that I need to treat. Measuring out a third of a milliliter just seems easier than a 1/10 squirt of something else. (That being said I haven’t really tried other dechlorinators. If API stopped making dechlorinator tomorrow I wouldn’t panic, dechlorinator is dechlorinator, and as long as it works I’m happy)

For food just a good variety works for me, then in a lot of cases just plants for filtration. All you need to do for plants is give them light, a trim every once in awhile and keep them fed.

Best all around product for me is a pair of aquarium tweezers. ACO’s work great, and are like an extension of my hand (which is great since I tend to drip A LOT if I get wet.)

 

Edited August 23, 2021 by FlyingFishKeeper

[anewbie]

I didn't vote because well the poll is too simple. The 'best' food depends in part on the fish i'm feeding. While I like omega-one, Repashy, hiraki, north fin (which you didn';t list but is highly regarded) and even tetra - a lot depends on the fish. tetra is not highly regarded by some but some of my fish sure do love their flakes above all else...  I can tell you that the fishes sometime won't eat the food with the best ingrediants and i have some fishes that hate garlic (northfin has a *lot* of garlic); but they will eat nls which only has a bit of garlic.

-

As for filter well it depends on the tank - what i use in a 5 gallon tank is not the same as a 500 gallon tank; and then the type can be a bit narrow. Sponge is pretty good but it is better if it is poret and lemon-head. If i have a sump full of sponges is it a giant sponge or a sump. 

As for dechlorinators - the store started me on sachem prime but i can't say it is better or worse than any other it is just what i use and my fishes haven't gone belly up during water changes so i haven't seen a need to switch.

[Beardedbillygoat1975]

Fritz ACCR is my favorite dechlorinator- the powder goes a long way. Feel like a bottle of prime no matter how big lasts for days. I keep stress coat around as well for bettas and fish struggling a little bit. 

[KentFishFanUK]

Like most people I like to vary what food I'm getting as I like the idea of providing to all tastes and covering all bases nutrition wise. 

That being said my 3 staples whilst being completely different formats (flake, micro pellets, sinking wafers) and colours etc all seem to have pretty much the same ingredients - fish or fish meal, wheat, smaller amounts of krill and spirulina and algae etc so I do wonder if it's more of an illusion of variety than anything! 

I do occasionally do frozen as a treat and repashy soilent green which does at least have very different ingredients so hopefully that's enough variety. 

Once I'm out of this food I'm going to order a few different flakes, I've found somewhere I can buy high quality flakes that are either mostly brine shrimp, or krill, or spirulina, or vegetable and I think they even had a daphnia one (or insect of some sort) - going to buy them all and mix them together! 

I really like the repashy soilent green too, when I have more tanks to justify it I plan to get a few of there other ones to vary it up even more. 

Don't have much experience with all the other aquarium products, I tend to like the SeaChem stuff as I like their descriptions/instructions etc and they seem the best range but I'm probably just being a sucker for good marketing. 

I never got on very well with test strips but I like using the API liquid test kit. 

[GameCzar]

I dont really need a dechlorinator, but Prime has saved my fishies from my stupidity from time to time. 

[Guppy Guy]

On 8/23/2021 at 10:58 AM, GameCzar said:

I dont really need a dechlorinator, but Prime has saved my fishies from my stupidity from time to time. 

Same here 😂! It has bought me a day or 2 before I have time to do a water change. I always tell new aquarium people: ”my fish live off prime, or in it 😛 ” 

[PineSong]

On 8/22/2021 at 7:11 PM, Patrick_G said:

My favorite products:

- Aquarium coop coarse sponge as a pre-filter, a air driven filter or stuffed in a HOB. 
 

 

Patrick, how do you do this--do you just order a small sponge filter and use the sponge as a pre-filter, ditching the plastic parts, or is there a way to order just the sponge? My pre-filter sponges clogging up and slowing down my HOBs is making me nuts.

[Guppysnail]

On 8/27/2021 at 7:57 PM, PineSong said:

Patrick, how do you do this--do you just order a small sponge filter and use the sponge as a pre-filter, ditching the plastic parts, or is there a way to order just the sponge? My pre-filter sponges clogging up and slowing down my HOBs is making me nuts.

Co-op sells prefilter sponges without a hole at the bottom. 😁 they even list hole sizes. I use medium and cut the center a bit for my canisters large becomes the tank centerpiece. 🤣

[PineSong]

On 8/27/2021 at 8:03 PM, Guppysnail said:

Co-op sells prefilter sponges without a hole at the bottom. 😁 they even list hole sizes. I use medium and cut the center a bit for my canisters large becomes the tank centerpiece. 🤣

I don't know how I missed this--will surely be ordering some of these. Thanks!

[Patrick_G]

And they sell sheets of the coarse sponge for what ever use you might have. 

[skipper]

Literally ditched all internal parts of my hob for the ACO coarse sponge sheet/prefilter sponge/biomedia and my water is now crystal. Mostly thanks to many friends on the forum encouraging a fast day aka “just say no to fish gluttony” (Italian grandma mRNA is in my bones that last bit was HARD).

results:

 

[PineSong]

On 8/27/2021 at 10:09 PM, skipper said:

Literally ditched all internal parts of my hob for the ACO coarse sponge sheet/prefilter sponge/biomedia and my water is now crystal. Mostly thanks to many friends on the forum encouraging a fast day aka “just say no to fish gluttony” (Italian grandma mRNA is in my bones that last bit was HARD).

results:

 

Good to know--I've got fluff in my HOBs instead of charcoal and I feel like it does a pretty good job with keeping water crisp but it's not as long lasting as coarse sponge would be. I also have Italian grandma DNA and I have not yet been able to accomplish an entire fast day other than when medicating for parasites. I have given them "breakfast only" some days and I can feel their eyes burning holes in me as I walk past. The mollies practically do flips. Brutal!