Tidal vs Aquaclear

[Rycraft]

So I got a Tidal 55 as I had seen very positive things about it and it helps me sleep a little easier knowing a late night power outage won't effect it like it would for the bio filter in my Aquaclear 50.

So I've had the Tidal 55 up and running for about 2-3 weeks now and I have to say I like almost everything about it but I feel like it does a terrible job of actually pulling floating debris out of the water column (which is kind of the whole purpose of having a filter, right?).  Anyone else have any experience with this? I have coarse sponge attached to the surface skimmer and the intake tube (which I really wish was longer! I had extensions on my AC that got right near the substrate).

Having the debris floating has been so bothersome I'm thinking of going back to my AC and just dealing with repriming. I could keep the thing running the entire time I did water changes too with the intake extension. I have to turn the Tidal off for even a small water change. 

Edited January 23, 2021 by Rycraft

[Garren]

Thank you for the post. I have been reading multiple reviews on both and have seen multiple people say the same thing with Tidal HOB. I personally like Aquaclear because of all the room to customize the media. The only down fall I have had with Aquaclear is the priming. They would capture the market if they made a filter with a in tank pump. 

 

[Dawn T]

4 hours ago, Garren B said:

The only down fall I have had with Aquaclear is the priming. They would capture the market if they made a filter with a in tank pump. 

 

I agree! I love my AC HOB, except for THAT.

[Rycraft]

@Garren B the Tidal definitely has a large media basket, however I'm not sure it does much good if the filter doesn't draw in the detritus to run through your sponge/filter floss. Very frustrating. I may go back to the AC or sprint for an OASE Biomaster thermo. Expensive but I'm not sure it gets an easier for filter maintenance and time is money!

[JettsPapa]

6 hours ago, Garren B said:

Thank you for the post. I have been reading multiple reviews on both and have seen multiple people say the same thing with Tidal HOB. I personally like Aquaclear because of all the room to customize the media. The only down fall I have had with Aquaclear is the priming. They would capture the market if they made a filter with a in tank pump. 

 

On the other hand, the pumps are incredibly easy to remove to clean the impeller.

[StephenP2003]

I've been running a Tidal 75 for 5 months now. Here are the pros for me:

• It moves a lot of water. I have it in a 29-gallon pleco growout so that's a big plus.
• It has a very wide range of flow settings making it versatile for different tank sizes, livestock, and filter media.
• It self-primes

Those are the three things it has going for it over the aquaclear. I have a lot of gripes about the tidal, but some of those gripes may be preferable to others:

• The skimmer seems to be the most effective part of the intake. You can't turn it completely off, and there's no out-of-the-box way of adding a prefilter to it. Because of the skimmer being so prominent, I do think it contributes a lot to the filter's lack of water-polishing ability. I, too, have more floaters in that tank (granted, it's a pleco growout so the feeding never stops)
• The media basket is really, really restrictive. You have to fill it loosely and lightly if you want to minimize bypass. And a large amount of bypass is basically inevitable at full flow. People have modded theirs by drilling extra holes in the media basket. 
• Because of the bypass and restriction, you may have to deal with the nagging blue cylinder reminding you, the dumb fishkeeper, to clean the media even if you just cleaned it an hour ago.
• It's noisier than the aquaclear equivalent -- not the motor per se, but the water turbulence. Guess it has something to do with how the water exits.

It's a functional filter. Maintenance is easy, it's reliable, and it's probably very popular for anyone who wants the specific features that are completely absent in the aquaclear.

[David Ellsworth]

I have an aquaclear 30 and a tidal 35. I have noticed that neither really polishes the water at all as sold. I have to add some filter floss to the hang on back in order to pull small particulate out of the water. Just place the sponge at the bottom, filter floss next, and then biomedia bag ontop that. 

 

Both work well. But everytime you shut off the aquaclear to feed the tank it siphons all the water out of the unit and you have to reprime it every time, which is super annoying. In power outages you would have the aquaclear running dry until you catch it, so there is that.

My aquaclear seems to run louder than my tidal as well. That little ramp helps avoid the water splashing sound if you keep your water level from dropping too much. The aquaclear may have more oxygenation due to more water fall, but someone would have to test this out. I doubt the difference would be much though, you'd need a small waterfall and stream bubbling over rocks to really oxygenate the water significantly I'd wager. Just a small half inch to one inch waterfall wouldn't do too much.

[Doug_E]

The tidal design also allows amano shrimp to climb into the media basket and hide there indefinitely. I thought I lost all mine and found them in the bottom of the filter when I cleaned it. 

[Clovis]

I am struggling with my Tidal 55 as well. So far I have tried sponge filling the bottom layer, then bio balls in a bag and some floss on top.  This results in bypass within a couple days and this week nearly shut off flow. Water was coming out of the control knob! 
 

Today I removed a bit of the sponge on the bottom and left out the floss. Seems like not much mechanical filtration but I guess I’ll see what it does. 
 

I have cleaned the impeller and the filter is only a month old. Runs perfectly right after cleaning. 
 

any ideas?

[Rycraft]

@Clovis I'm currently running coarse sponge on the intake tube and over the surface skimmer (bought from Aquarium co-op). I changed the skimmer sponge to the aquarium Co-Op stuff yesterday when doing maintenance and that seems to have helped. I think I had more of a 'medium' sponge on there before which was getting clogged and the Tidal definitely draws more water from the skimmer than the intake which is incredibly annoying. 

As for the media box I have the original blue sponge in there with an additional sponge over it and a bag of seachem carbon and a bag of matrix on top but was running into the same issues where it was overflowing and not running through the media. The AC mechanical sponge is far superior and I would only have to clean it once a month. I feel like I'm going to be cleaning the Tidal sponge weekly which is again very annoying. 

I think I'm just going to save my pennies for the OASE Biomaster. The prefilter on it does most of the heavy lifting and you can just pull it out separate from everything else to clean. 

[StephenP2003]

2 hours ago, Rycraft said:

Tidal definitely draws more water from the skimmer than the intake which is incredibly annoying. 

It's a deal breaker for me. And it's not just the forward-facing skimmer intake grate. There's another grate on the bottom of the motor housing that draws in water and debris, and shrimp and fry. I cleaned out my Tidal last night and discovered several small plecos (still alive) that must've been living in filter sludge for months. And lots of baby shrimp, and a few large dead cherry shrimp.  Overly restrictive media housing with wide open intake holes is a bad combo for me.

[Clovis]

@Rycraft

 

thanks. Could you send me link to the sponge you got from AC? I’m in Canada so cant order unfortunately but I’d like to better understand the density. I don’t know the difference between fine and coarse sponge yet. 

Edited January 24, 2021 by Clovis

[Rycraft]

@Clovissure thing!

Sponge I used on the outside of the skimmer: https://www.aquariumcoop.com/collections/filter-media/products/sponge-pad-coarse

Sponge over the intake tube: https://www.aquariumcoop.com/collections/sponge-filters/products/medium-pre-filter-sponge

Just cleaned the Tidal yesterday and it's already sending a bunch of water bypass through the sides of the basket. Can't win with this thing. Probably going back to the Aquaclear 😑

[nabokovfan87]

On 1/23/2021 at 10:16 PM, StephenP2003 said:

I've been running a Tidal 75 for 5 months now. Here are the pros for me:

• It moves a lot of water. I have it in a 29-gallon pleco growout so that's a big plus.
• It has a very wide range of flow settings making it versatile for different tank sizes, livestock, and filter media.
• It self-primes

Those are the three things it has going for it over the aquaclear. I have a lot of gripes about the tidal, but some of those gripes may be preferable to others:

• The skimmer seems to be the most effective part of the intake. You can't turn it completely off, and there's no out-of-the-box way of adding a prefilter to it. Because of the skimmer being so prominent, I do think it contributes a lot to the filter's lack of water-polishing ability. I, too, have more floaters in that tank (granted, it's a pleco growout so the feeding never stops)
• The media basket is really, really restrictive. You have to fill it loosely and lightly if you want to minimize bypass. And a large amount of bypass is basically inevitable at full flow. People have modded theirs by drilling extra holes in the media basket. 
• Because of the bypass and restriction, you may have to deal with the nagging blue cylinder reminding you, the dumb fishkeeper, to clean the media even if you just cleaned it an hour ago.
• It's noisier than the aquaclear equivalent -- not the motor per se, but the water turbulence. Guess it has something to do with how the water exits.

It's a functional filter. Maintenance is easy, it's reliable, and it's probably very popular for anyone who wants the specific features that are completely absent in the aquaclear.

Well stated. I agree with everything except for the noise.  ACs are ridiculously loud and noisy to me.  The "turbulence" is because of the extended "exit chute" that pushed the water a bit further out across the water than most other HoBs tend to do. If you adjust the water level, it's basically silent. It just really depends on where you keep your water level for how noisy the waterfall is.

On 1/24/2021 at 11:29 AM, StephenP2003 said:

It's a deal breaker for me. And it's not just the forward-facing skimmer intake grate. There's another grate on the bottom of the motor housing that draws in water and debris, and shrimp and fry. I cleaned out my Tidal last night and discovered several small plecos (still alive) that must've been living in filter sludge for months. And lots of baby shrimp, and a few large dead cherry shrimp.  Overly restrictive media housing with wide open intake holes is a bad combo for me.

There's a way to fix it, requires a lot of work, but here's the quick and dirty version if you do want to "fix it".  Especially the bypass on the basket.  I just got the parts to do this on mine.  I'll end up making a thread or something, but specifically trying to make it "look good" compared to this iteration.
 

 

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

On 1/24/2021 at 2:54 AM, David Ellsworth said:

In power outages you would have the aquaclear running dry until you catch it, so there is that.

So yeah, yesterday I came home to find my Aquaclear grinding and the clocks flashing from a storm that had rolled through. I am sure it was running dry for hours.  Is there REALLY no way to prevent this?  We need some kind of hack for this nonsense.  I'm in FL and it is storm season.

Edited June 7, 2022 by Chick-In-Of-TheSea
added

[Wrencher_Scott]

On 6/7/2022 at 10:07 AM, Chick-In-Of-TheSea said:

So yeah, yesterday I came home to find my Aquaclear grinding and the clocks flashing from a storm that had rolled through. I am sure it was running dry for hours.  Is there REALLY no way to prevent this?  We need some kind of hack for this nonsense.  I'm in FL and it is storm season.

You have to have a filter with the pump in the water like a Tidal or canister. 

I don't have lots of outages but I do run a UPS on my filter and air pumps. If you can afford it I say do this, it will get you by (depending on the size of UPS) for hours.

I also have a generator for any long outages. I figure it's worth it's weight in gold if it saves my fish and my refrigerator's contents. 

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

I have several UPS sitting around. I could either hook one up to the Aquaclear, or I could take the Aquaclear back because I only bought it last week.  I have another filter I can use that doesn't dump water in outages.

P.S. @Wrencher_Scott your profile pic is BEAUTIFUL. 😍

Edited June 7, 2022 by Chick-In-Of-TheSea
added stuff

[Wrencher_Scott]

On 6/7/2022 at 10:25 AM, Chick-In-Of-TheSea said:

I have several UPS sitting around. I could either hook one up to the Aquaclear, or I could take the Aquaclear back because I only bought it last week.  I have another filter I can use that doesn't dump water in outages.

Might as well use them. Make sure the batteries are good though.

Also, any pump can decide not to start after it's shut off. I've had that happen too, not often but it happens. It's best to keep them running in the first place. 

Edited June 7, 2022 by Wrencher_Scott

[Hoi Polloi]

This is how I have the Tidal 55 setup to polish the water.

It's a floss sheet cut into 6"x6". I drape the floss sheet over the spout and into the basket, then put in the sponge and activated carbon mesh net to hold the floss sheet in place. Works for me and I hope it may help you out.

[JettsPapa]

On 6/7/2022 at 12:07 PM, Chick-In-Of-TheSea said:

So yeah, yesterday I came home to find my Aquaclear grinding and the clocks flashing from a storm that had rolled through. I am sure it was running dry for hours.  Is there REALLY no way to prevent this?  We need some kind of hack for this nonsense.  I'm in FL and it is storm season.

I've seen some reports that coating the shaft with food grade grease helps.

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

On 6/7/2022 at 2:26 PM, JettsPapa said:

I've seen some reports that coating the shaft with food grade grease helps.

Thanks @JettsPapa. My issue is that during a power failure, all of the water leaves the filter. Then when the power comes back on, the filter is running with no water in it, and that's what makes the noise. It is a problem when I'm not home because I cannot prime the pump by dumping water into the filter box.

[nabokovfan87]

On 6/7/2022 at 10:56 AM, Hoi Polloi said:

This is how I have the Tidal 55 setup to polish the water.

It's a floss sheet cut into 6"x6". I drape the floss sheet over the spout and into the basket, then put in the sponge and activated carbon mesh net to hold the floss sheet in place. Works for me and I hope it may help you out.

Please be sure to check out my "Fixing my Seachem Tidal" thread in the experiments section.  Essentially there is a cutout that you're intentionally/unintentionally covering up and if you're aware of this when you place the floss in there you can better ensure the flow path and use the floss to protect your media from the bypass.
 

 

On 6/7/2022 at 11:26 AM, JettsPapa said:

On 6/7/2022 at 10:07 AM, Chick-In-Of-TheSea said:

So yeah, yesterday I came home to find my Aquaclear grinding and the clocks flashing from a storm that had rolled through. I am sure it was running dry for hours.  Is there REALLY no way to prevent this?  We need some kind of hack for this nonsense.  I'm in FL and it is storm season.

I've seen some reports that coating the shaft with food grade grease helps.

There is 100% ZERO WAY to prevent this until AC/Fluval change the materials on the impeller/shaft.  It erodes away the shaft due to vibration and this is the noise you're hearing.  There is something they sell in swim shops and available on amazon called 100% silicone grease.  That's what you're looking for to minimize this as much as possible.  Unfortunately, this can easily be modified by anyone who makes a pump selling a secondhand pump that fits the casing, but no one has done that.  Imagine what could be if someone did. 
 

On 6/7/2022 at 2:23 PM, Chick-In-Of-TheSea said:

Thanks @JettsPapa. My issue is that during a power failure, all of the water leaves the filter. Then when the power comes back on, the filter is running with no water in it, and that's what makes the noise. It is a problem when I'm not home because I cannot prime the pump by dumping water into the filter box.

Even if the pump works, it's common knowledge among those who have them, you're going to have to restart the impeller with your finger or a small chopstick or something.  It's very unfortunate and is ultimately one of the reasons why I won't use those HoBs anymore.  I'd rather put up with fixing the tidal than a pump that doesn't work.  Other options include the aqueon quietflow (stuff it with sponge) and the marineland newer models (again, stuff it with sponge).

Edited June 7, 2022 by nabokovfan87
added link

[Streetwise]

There is another HoB that should be in the discussion:

 

[nabokovfan87]

On 6/7/2022 at 3:43 PM, Streetwise said:

There is another HoB that should be in the discussion:

Do they have a version of this that isn't "slim"?

[Streetwise]

@nabokovfan87, I don’t think so. I just think that it is another design for comparison. It fits several Aquaclear foam sizes, and a few pre-filter sizes.