Wanted: Canister Filter for 300lt Tank

It has been many years since I have been into fish keeping and now my son has been bitten by this bug
I have just upgraded his tank to a 300lt 4ft and I'm looking for a canister filter. Based in Benoni area, appreciate any feedback or advice.

 

I'm using the SOBO SF1500F for the last couple of months and have few complaints - I am running a 90L though but I will say that I have spare capacity and then some. Opening it up after a month the media was mostly clean and I could have left it for another two months at least.

It's the cheapest canister filter available locally and if you have the space you could run two in tandem and it'd still be cheaper than buying an FX2 or 307 or equivalent. One will probably not be enough for 300L unless you stock lightly, but if I were in your shoes I'd buy two, fill the first entirely with floss to act as a prefilter for the second which I'd fill entirely with foam and which you could leave undisturbed for months on end while only maintaining the 1st filter.

My complaints are firstly that the intake downtube, while adjustable for length, is too long even in its shortest position unless your tank is very tall. I cut mine chop chop using a small copper pipe cutter I happened to have on hand but it was a small annoyance and not really even worth mentioning.

Secondly, it doesn't come with any media except a thin cotton pad which they could have kept, so plan on buying coarse foam and filter floss (I use bulk dacron batting you can buy from any haberdashery, it's the same thing but a tenth of the price). Come to think of it now, the cotton pad did come in useful - I used it as a template to cut my foam sheets.

Thirdly, the quality of the intake plumbing coming over the tank rim is low-rent - it's constructed out of plastic elbows using o-rings and mine always sucked in air causing the filter to burp a continuous stream of bubbles - and when it develops the inevitable air pocket the impeller becomes noisy - but these problems disappeared entirely when I replaced my lily pipes with glass items and the filter is whisper quiet. Check on Temu, the glass pipes are cheap as chips (if you go this route make sure you get the 17mm variants).

Lastly, it has a push-pull plunger used to prime the canister and pump. I find it to be rather ineffective causing a fair bit of frustration. It's easier to ensure the canister is filled with water and to prime the entire intake section with water first.

 

Thank you very much

 

You are most welcome. There is something else that occurred to me in the meantime regarding my suggested setup, specifically the glass lily pipes if you opt for them. The intake pipe has a number of slits, and I find that it only allows enough flow when clean and unobstructed. I have used a foam tube I had on hand to stop it from blocking, and you will probably need to do the same (a square of foam sheet wrapped around and secured with cable ties will do). But more importantly, one 17mm intake will not provide enough flow for two filters in series. If in series, you can run two intake lily pipes in parallel using a Y-connector (the 22mm vinyl tubing won't be a bottleneck for two filters), or simply run the two filters in parallel instead, each with their own set of pipes.

 

Have a Penn-Plax 1000 im looking to part with pm if interested