Filtration for new Aquariums

For many fish keepers young and old, Christmas can often bring the gift of a new aquarium.

New aquaria are hazardous places for fish to be, traditional bacteria-powered removal of fish toxins takes a while to get established and in the meantime your pets can be poisoned by their own waste products.

Using a Hydra filter from the outset will maintain water quality and prevent New Tank Syndrome in those critical early days of your aquarium establishing itself. It’s a worthwhile insurance policy that supports the slow, considered stocking that we would still recommend. Once other forms of filtration are mature and colonised by the right bacteria, these units can be put aside for emergencies if you wish and make a good addition to a first aid/crisis kit. Sometimes you’ll need effective filtration that is ready to work without any biologically limited delays.  

Used long term, they can slow the accumulation of nitrate in busy tanks which can be useful if regular water changes struggle to keep your system in check, or if your source water is already high. We’d never suggest that any equipment takes the place of key husbandry such as testing and water changes but not all systems are the same and aquaria can be as diverse as the fishes they house.

Find out more about our findings with these filters when we tested one under a variety of conditions. The results were initially confusing but confirmed our observations in real world applications that were seemingly confusing:https://www.fishkeeper.co.uk/stories/hydra-findings

There’s still a place for biological filtration and if you need beneficial bacteria in a hurry we’ve found the Microbe Lift range to be extremely effective at reducing maturation time for conventional filters. Between these two approaches there’s no need to expose your pets to the stresses of harmful water quality issues ever again.