Undergravel Filter and Aquascaping

[Tombeaux]

Hey everyone, would love some thoughts from the community on this, thanks for the support!

I am curious about having undergravel filters on my next scape and was curious if depth of substrate matters, i.e. can it be too deep? The uplift tubes will be connected to my biomaster 350. I think I can scape the tank to hide the tubes.

Do plants grow well on UGFs? I'm pretty religious when it comes to my maintenence and ferts.

 

Been in the hobby 7 months, tank below is my 55 gallon acrylic display. 

[Guppy Guy]

As far as UFGs go, they are pretty outdated, but they are still pretty popular. With that being said, you would need a really thick layer of gravel to go on top of it. Also, as the UFG is built to keep the gravel clean, there won’t be a ton of mulm(uneaten food, fish waste, dead plants) which in my opinion, really helps the plants grow. 

With that being said, I have no experience with UFGs, especially with plants, so more opinions will be best. @Streetwise and maybe @Guppysnail might know something I don’t.

[Guppysnail]

I have not had ugf in decadeS.  I’m sorry but I can’t really help. @Torrey I believe uses ugf with plants. Best of luck. 

[Streetwise]

I haven’t used UGFs since my youth. With air, they would probably pull some mulm into the gravel, and trap some under it. With a canister, you might pull it all out.

I think sponge filters are a nice solution for moving water, but keeping mulm. I’m not picky about maintenance, because I like keeping the nutrients in my aquariums, but there are many ways to run tanks.

[Torrey]

I have UGF in almost every tank.

I love them, and with a little preplanning you can get the best of both the planted world, and the UGF.

It's late, so no new pictures for a tutorial tonight.

The 4' tank in my spouse's room has UGF on the right ¼ of the tank, with gravel and river rocks on top of the UGF. The uplift tube is sealed to an inverted Bolthouse Farms bottle that houses a pond pump, and the pump runs the waterfall on the left side of the tank. 

Left ⅓ of the tank is soil capped with sand, and is growing stem plants and watersprite beautifully. The middle of the tank is gravel, to keep the soil and sand out of the UGF.

Ammonia, nitrites and nitrates all read 0 last week, so I returned to dosing EZ Green 2x a week. Plant growth is spectacular!

Waterfall on far left, this is not the best picture but it's what I have on my phone. Plants are well rooted in the soil capped with play sand. You can easily see the grave barrier in the center. Far right side has a cracked top corner, so water is never more than an inch higher than this.

Close up of the waterfall, you can see the tannins in the water and the sandy bottom. You can also see the damselfly drinking from the water running down the cholla (damselfly larvae keep the endlers under control, adult damselfly eat any bugs we get in the plants).

Older picture of the dirt capped sand side, during the awkward algae stage.

Sand slopes down to gravel, no UGF on this side.

Back in early May? Late April?

The UGF is only under the far right side,  under the larger river rock. Mulm is sucked down through the river rocks (with the aquarium water, fish and snail waste, and occasionally an endler fry), and is pumped through the clear tubing you see (I used ID ⅝" fridge drinking water hose) in the back, over to the far left, which fertilizes the plants on the left for phenomenal growth. 

I'll grab new pictures tomorrow. 

 

 

 

[Torrey]

I'm trying a new option for plants with UGF in my 4' dining room tank: UGF on ½ the tank, pump running a waterfall again. 

This time, I am going to do a synergistic combination of @Guppysnail's potted plants idea.... but I have black deli dishes that I am putting a tube of black plastic canvas in, filling with soil, and growing plants up these "pillars of soil".

Goal is to create more vertical growth, and increase the 'floor space' for the UGF, with out clogging the UGF with soil.

I've almost got enough plants to start, so will🤞 be setting up the tank in the next couple of weeks.

[Tanked]

On 11/14/2021 at 11:08 AM, Tombeaux said:

I am curious about having undergravel filters on my next scape and was curious if depth of substrate matters, i.e. can it be too deep? The uplift tubes will be connected to my biomaster 350. I think I can scape the tank to hide the tubes.

Do plants grow well on UGFs? I'm pretty religious when it comes to my maintenence and ferts.

First: great looking tank.

Can the substrate be too deep? It depends on what kind of substrate and how you are driving the UGF.  The coarser the substrate, the easier it is to pass water through it, and potentially the less effective the mechanical filtration.  I use 2-3" of either official "aquarium gravel" or Big Box  pea gravel.  The planted UGF tank (2"+) with a single air pump had a healthy trumpet snail population.  I added a second air pump to increase filtration. The plants are fine, but I haven't seen a trumpet snail in weeks.  I think there might be a connection. The planted 75 (3"+) uses two power heads with a gph similar to your Biomaster.  I think I could easily add another inch of gravel.  When trying to move them, I found the plants in both tanks are well rooted. 

Do plants grow well in UGFs? I think it was Cory that said  that having a UGF in a planted tank gives you the best of both worlds for root and water column feeders.  In the video below  Cory said that a UGF  "is super beneficial for plants."  The UGF segment begins at 17:35

 

 

[Gator]

@Tanked; I used UGF's exclusively in the "80's and I loved them, I still have one in a 20L tank and I still love it. It is best to have no more than 3 inches of gravel on an UGF so that the gravel is easy to clean periodically with a gravel vac while at the same time you'll be cleaning out the muck underneath the UGF. Your water will always be crystal clear and well oxygenated.

Live plants will not grow with an UGF because of the unnatural flow of water down through the roots unless the plant is left in its pot, so if your tank has an UGF that covers the entire bottom, you'll need to consider that option. You may also consider artificial plants.

I like the idea @Torrey has about the placement of the UGF, sand, gravel, and plants, the photos look great, but I can't do that in my 20L because the UGF covers the entire bottom.

When I had all of my tanks in the '80's equipped with UGF's, I marveled at how easy it was to medicate the tank if I needed to, but that was before I learned to keep my tanks temps at 85 degrees, so now I don't need to medicate my tanks.

 

 

[Tombeaux]

Thanks all, very much appreciated! This is really helpful information, and of course Corey had a video on it 😄. I think I will give a UGF set up a go and let it run for a 6 month trial based on what I am hearing. Not many of the professional Scapers run UGFs and I am sure they're on to something. Lol but I want to figure out for myself and tinker a bit. Seems like:

- air pumps, or keeping GPH the same but not increasing to 10x volume per hour recommended in competitive aquascaping

- 4" max of substrate, coarse but not too coarse. 

This current set up is about 4 months old and I want it to go for another 2, before I rescape mostly to teach myself patience. 6 months from Feb is Aug and that's when I want to start my IAPLC build. 

[Tanked]

On 11/15/2021 at 11:21 AM, Gator said:

Live plants will not grow with an UGF because of the unnatural flow of water down through the roots unless the plant is left in its pot,

 It would kill my plants if they found out that they have been doing it wrong all these years

[Torrey]

On 11/17/2021 at 6:48 AM, Tanked said:

 It would kill my plants if they found out that they have been doing it wrong all these years

Mine too🤣🤣🤣

[Patrick_G]

@Tombeaux keep us in the loop. Like most of the older folks I always ran UGFs in the 80s, mostly because I was a kid an and power filters were so expensive! It’ll be interesting to see what happens with the plants! 

[Streetwise]

It sounds like depth and flow control are key to keeping nutrients in the substrate with these setups. It would be cool to see roots penetrate the filter grid to get at the mulm underneath.

[Patrick_G]

On 11/17/2021 at 8:48 AM, Tanked said:

 It would kill my plants if they found out that they have been doing it wrong all these years

Good thing they can’t read. 😁

[Torrey]

On 11/20/2021 at 12:14 PM, Streetwise said:

It sounds like depth and flow control are key to keeping nutrients in the substrate with these setups. It would be cool to see roots penetrate the filter grid to get at the mulm underneath.

It's a wee bit difficult to get the pictures from underneath, due to lighting and the contortions required to take a picture from under a tank.

 

Can you make out the white roots in the mulm?

The white swirls between the silver shelf/ metal shelves.

[Tombeaux]

Was asked to provide an update, and it's been two months since trying the "Contest tank with undergravel filter" experiment. So here's my experience about halfway to submittal date for the contest:

- decided to run a powerhead in the uplift tube off of the plate to not suck nutrients out into the canister filter where plants couldn't uptake them. I was able to hide it well in the hardscape. I used a combo of fluval stratum and eco-complete on top of lava rock approx 1/2" to 3/4" on top of the UGF plate. 

- with the slope needed to create the perception of depth in an aquascape, I decided to place the plate in the middle of the tank so substrate is about 2" above. But, I am finding all the hardscape needed to do a competition style tank is compressing the substrate. So the flow is reduced on the powerhead

- also, what flow remains seems to be pushing nutrients everywhere in the aquarium which I *suspect* is good and bad. Good meaning lots of nutrients all throughout the water column for plants. Bad meaning there is so much nutrients that are not being locked into the substrate as algae (BBA) has been trickier. Although I've been able to keep it from exploding, but not quite reduced to a reasonable amount (I know it never truly 'goes away'). 

- while I was curious an enjoy the UGF so far, think I'll just cap with sand next time. Pictures to come in June after I upload to the IAPLC, AGA.