The AQUANEAT Aquarium Bio Sponge Filter is a cheap and effective way to keep your fish tank clean while also providing biological filtration. To see how you can properly set up this product, you can follow the instructions in this tutorial at Aquarium Blueprints.
1. Before doing anything else, it is important to note that the AQUANEAT Sponge Filter does not work on its own. Instead, you will need to get a compatible air pump as well as airline tubing.
For this guide, we will be using the Tetra Whisper Easy to Use Air Pump (for up to 100 gallons) and AQUANEAT Aquarium Airline Tubing in order to install the AQUANEAT Aquarium Bio Sponge Filter (for up to 60 gallons).
If you have another type of airline tubing, then you should make sure that the inner diameter measures at 3/16 inch. Otherwise, you may not be able to comfortably fit one end of the airline into the inlet of the sponge filter.
2. The sponge filter should come mostly assembled from its packaging box as you only need to install the plastic cylinder tube on top of it.
Before doing so, however, make sure you set up your air pump first.
3. Next, you need to attach one end of the airline tubing to the outlet of your air pump.
4. You should then thread the other end of the airline through the plastic cylinder tube and then attach it to the inlet of the AQUANEAT sponge filter.
5. Put the plastic cylinder tube on the top of the filter.
While you can technically leave this tube off, the sponge filter won’t be as effect at mechanical filtration. Therefore, we recommend that you install it unless the total height of the filter with the cylinder attached is higher than top of water line.
In our case, the AQUANEAT Bio Sponge Filter did not fit our shrimp-only tank with the tubing installed as it would end up sticking out beyond the water surface. Therefore, we ended up removing the plastic cylinder tubing. The filter will still trap debris from our shrimp tank although it doesn’t pick up as much as the same filter that has the plastic cylinder tubing attached in our 55-gallong tank.
6. Afterwards, we recommending plugging the air pump into the power outlet to see if you can feel and/or hear the air output from the filter.
If you do, then it should indicate that the air pump, airline tubing and sponge filter are all working as intended.
7. Next, you can put the sponge filter in your fish tank.
We recommend placing it in the middle of the tank so that it will be able to efficiently filter out all areas of the aquarium. With that said, you should be able to put it anywhere you want if you have another device generating a lot of water movement.
In our 55-gallon fish tank, we put the AQUANEAT Aquarium Bio Sponge Filter on the front left side of the tank and an air stone on the back right side. This setup has helped with keeping our 4-feet wide aquarium clean due to the constant water circulation created by these two devices.
You should now be done setting up this product as it should immediately start trapping any waterborne debris from your aquarium.