allpondsolutions HOB-500 Aquarium External Fish Tank Water Filter for Coldwater, Tropical or Marine Aquariums, for Tanks Up to 250 Litres – Includes Filter Foams, hose and Spray Bar - Full Kit.

Excellent value for money. The filter has separate baskets, so you can customise your media, although it does come with different grade sponge filters, from a porous sponge, down to a water polishing wool.The unit is compact, easy to put together, and the size of it looks smart on the side of my 125L tank, although it is rated for a higher volume tank.It comes with a spray bar, which I haven't used, so can't really comment, and a jet. The jet is pushed onto a rotating ball fitting, which is useful for getting the desired surface agitation, and you can adjust the water direction and pressure a good amount as both the inlet and outlet are also adjustable.The filter picks up a good amount of debris from the tank, and the multiple baskets are easily removed, cleaned out and replaced. Remember to prime the filter before turning on initially, and after maintenance as if you get an airlock it is noisy and splutters. Even with it filled, I've experienced this a couple of times, which is my only complaint, but I am also not using the factory filter media which may play a part. Once it has blown it through the system, which usually takes a few hours, it is so quiet that the only way I know it's working is because the vallisneria is dancing along the back of the tank in the flow.The performance is excellent for the price, and it works just as well, if not better than products more than double the price of this.I like the fact that you get the convenience of an external filter, the size of an internal filter, in a compact package that hangs on the back of the tank, allowing you to use the full footprint and volume of the tank for aquascaping and planting.There's bad reviews, but for a medium sized open top tank on top of a reinforced ikea kallax unit, it fits the bill perfectly, as I don't have to have it in a separate cabinet, or elsewhere.For a similar installation as my one, I would definitely recommend this filter.

The media could not be loaded. Very easy to set up and decent quality for the price. It has two flow options 1) Straight flow 2) Multiple small jet. And also outflow fast to slow.Canister comes with 5 compartments with filter wool already included so I'm going to see how these perform until I need to replace.Remember to prime canister before switching on. The pump has been running for two days now and has been very quiet and rattle free. Although this particular tank is in my shed so that wasn't really a big deal but I'd be happy to have this running in the house

I've been running this filter for 3 months now on a 35ltr Betta Tank. I figured, hey, it's cheap enough, not the end of the world if it's rubbish.And colour me pleasantly surprised, it's good!It was initially quite noisy, I gave it some time, rocked it about to loosen trapped air, but it was definitely a mechanical noise. I opened the entire thing up, unscrewing the lid and everything. Greased the impeller and all, but still noisy. Figured my gamble hadn't paid off, unplugged it, plugged it back in for some reason and viola, quiet! No idea how and why that worked, but it's been quietly working away ever since. I was a bit scared to mess with it in case it became noisy again, but eventually I had to give the filter media a rinse. The noise came back on reassembly, but again, unplug, replug and all was quiet again. Make of that what you will.I have yet to have any leaking issues personally.It is admittedly an awkward filter to maintain if you don't have much room around whichever side of the tank you put it on. It's quite heavy due to it having such a large capacity canister, and the design requires you to lift the whole thing away from the tank to unclip the canister for maintenance. Definitely would place it somewhere easy reach and lift if you have weak wrists, arthritis etc. And it can be fiddly/frustrating getting the layers of baskets to stay clipped together when removing/replacing in order to maintain the correct water flow through the canister.I also don't believe the flow adjuster valves are entirely airtight, as it can be a bit of balancing act between the in and out flow valves to get it so it doesn't suck a tiny stream of air in through them.However, outside of the mentioned issues, when it's all set up and doing it's job, it's a great filter for a very reasonable price. It's very adjustable, feels well made, has lots and lots of room for stuffing with filter media and happily chugs along doing it's job! :)

Superficially a good design let down by pump quality. Pump only ran for 30 - 60 secs before giving up, rattles, and waterflow stops. It can be convinced to start again but the same results. Pump barely pulls water through the minimal media supplied so adding you own upgraded media is not an option. Pump is fully concealed/moulded into the lid so tamper proof. I ran my own powerhead on it to push water hrough the unit but then one of the sealing clips broke. I really wanted to like this product as it seemed perfect for my set up but there are too much poor quality details. It's rubbish