Corner box filter or sponge filter?

What is the recommended filter type for a guppy breeding tank?
The tank currently has a small corner box filter in, and I have been toying with the idea of adding a sponge filter, or replacing it with a sponge filter.

What would you guys recommend?

The tank currently has a lot of guppy fry, and some RCS.

 

Sponge filter for the win! I could never get my box/corner filter to stop floating..... so i switched to a sponge filter (exactly the same one as in your pic) and haven't looked back since!

 

I would also go with the sponge filter.

 

I'm using the Sponge filter in my Breeding Guppy tank

 

I have managed to get the box filter to stay at the bottom, but it keep "walking" around.
The filter doesn't stay in one place, but moves a few cm's either way every day.

Sponge filter it will be then.
Thanks for the assistance.

 

One normally just ad a bit of gravel at the bottom of the box filter and it stays down.

 

The filter is weighted down with ammo chips, and stays at the bottom, but moves about like it is walking.

 

What is ammo chips?

 

Small stone chips that apparently help remove ammonia from the water.
Some sort of filter medium that was suggested to me by my LFS.

 

OK, zeolite, those are not very heavy. But go with the sponge.

 

sponge keeps your water cleaner than a corner filter as well. doesnt get a weird tint 6-8 months down the line. also looks neat.

 

Saw a handy tip on the interwebs regarding sponge filters....

Sponge filters are great when it comes to biomechanical filtration, but do nothing for chemical filtration.
A handy tip was to fill the centre tube with activated charcoal, which should assist with chemical filtration.
You get all the filtration needs (biological, mechanical and chemical) for a fraction of the cost.

 

ahhhh " activated charcoal " hmmm not sure about using that in any of my tanks.

What is the chemical filtration you are trying to filter out?

Later Ferdie

 

I have seen people swear it the best thing after sliced bread, and others that don't like charcoal in their tanks at all.
What are the pro's and cons of charcoal?

I have been using it for years, simply because it was either in the filter to start off with, or the LFS suggested it, as in a corner box filter.

 

Hmmm. Would be interesting to see it work with charcoal in the center column. We could do an experiment!
My hypotheses: 1) The charcoal would just get blown out the top with the force of the rising bubbles and water column.
2) If it was packed tightly enough to prevent 1, the water flow caused by the rising bubbles would be restricted, killing the sponge filters main mechanism.

 

The problem that I have with charcoal in any filtration setup is that it eventually absorb a lot of bad stuff, but after a while when it has become saturated it start to leak the bad stuff back into your aquarium. I have once lost a tank with Keyhole cichlids that way. In my opinion, go for the sponge filter it is deffinately the better filter of the two.

 

Activated carbon does not leak stuff back into the aquarium when saturated, not sure why people think that.

Some people say it leaks phosphate into the aquarium over time but has not proven it.

Carbon absorbs devolved organics and bind them.

 

Get purigen...problem solved