OQTTNEO Aquarium Internal Filter For 40-120 Gallons

My roommate has a tank with fish that need high oxygen, his hang on back filter just wasn’t cutting it so I let him use this. The fish are so happy now and the tank is crystal clear!

This thing puts out some serious water flow. It is enough for me not to recommend it for anything smaller than a 20 gallon tank, possibly a 30 gallon. That amount of flow should be more than enough to really filter your water, but it doesn’t because of a design flaw.

Here’s the thing, if you just leave the filter loaded up with coarse sponges like how it arrives, it will filter the water and do a decent job, but coarse sponges leave a lot of fine detritus behind and your water will not be crystal clear. A good filter allows stages of filtration, be they mechanical, biological, or chemical. Most internal canister filters afford you the ability to swap out the filter material to achieve the balance you desire for your tank. This one does not. The reason being that the water does not follow a very clear path through the filter material. The water can enter the filter from basically every direction, and water will always take the path of least resistance, so all of the filter material that is furthest away from the impeller will hardly see any flow at all.

Is there a way to get around this? Sure, there is always a way. You could fashion a filter “sausage” that was wrapped in cellophane or something and only allowed the water to enter from the bottom and exit through the top. That would probably work, but do you really want to do that every time?

I’m giving it three stars because, out of the box, it does a semi decent job, but the only real way to get this to do an acceptable job without a ton of extra work is to pack it with a finer sponge and hope that it provides enough biological filtration to keep your ammonia and nitrite levels down.

First there were under gravel filter plates and air bubble lift tubes. Then there were power-heads to replace the air bubbles and get better flow. After that, sponge filters with air tubes that replaced the under gravel filters. Finally, there were power-heads combined with the sponge filters. All of that happened more than 30 years ago.

These days a lot of fish keepers use the sponge filter with the air bubble lift to keep their tanks clear. I tried these and just didn’t like the way they worked. I used to have power-head and sponge filters like this one in my tanks back in the 1990’s, but they became a bit hard to find. That’s when I switched to canister filters, which are harder to keep clean.

In my many years of having aquariums I have found that these filters just work. They are super easy to clean as you only need to remove the sponge and rinse it once a week or so. This one comes with a plastic cage to go around the sponge, which makes removal of the sponge super easy. The cage helps hold debris as you remove it for cleaning as well. The cage will also accept any just about sponge that is the right size. There is no need to hunt for specially shaped filter sponges like most filters these days.

The pump on these filters doesn’t need to be super powerful, and the power-head on this unit is more than adequate. The output of the power-head can be rotated to send the water in what ever direction is needed, and there is a 90 degree diverter included in the kit as well. The white plastic hose connects to a built in venturi to inject bubbles into the tank, which helps oxygenate the water.

This filter is easy to set up, and uses suction cups to attach it to the inside of the tank. The suction cups are pretty standard, which is good as they will need to be replaced occasionally. The suction cups make taking the power-head out and cleaning the gunk out of the pump orifices really easy. The pump should be cleaned every couple of months.

One thing to keep in mind is the power-head on this filter must be submerged to keep the pump from overheating. That means the entire filter will be installed under water. The good news is this filter comes with well written instructions, which is surprising for any product these days. Even though installation is pretty simple on this type of filter, I appreciated the instructions.

The only thing I wish this filter had is an extension tube that goes between the power-head and the filter cage. That would make this filter easier to use in deeper tanks. This would put the water flow near the surface and the filtration near the bottom, which is the most effective configuration.

Another use for this type of filter is as a tank cleaning tool. Put one of these filters in the water as you vacuum your gravel or when you clean out your canister filter. It will suck up and trap stuff that gets stirred up as you clean.

Keep this filter clean and submerged, and it will last a long time. I’m planning on getting a few of these filters to have on hand so I can replace my expensive canister filters as they fail.

I had average expectations with this pump but was pleasantly surprised. Switched out with another pump that had not even met half its life expectancy and wished I had done so sooner. This pump picked up gunk from the bottom of the tank that the other one didn’t even have the capacity to ever do. I now have a crystal clear tank again and the fish are as happy as can be!