Aqueon Aquarium Power Filter 10 – up to 10 Gallon

Review by Jen for Zoo Med 501 Turtle Canister Filter
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Praise the Lord! Someone has finally made a suitable turtle filter. My 6″ western painted turtle has clean water because of this filter. This filter was simple to set-up, and hangs right on the side of my tank, not taking up any extra space (I purchased the filter hanger seperatly). As with any filter, you will need to replace the charcoal inserts, and they run around $3. This is a small price to pay to keep your pet’s water clean. I find I need to replace them every 3-4 weeks. My turtle loves the optional spray bar (included) but it can be a pain to clean. Buy a cheap, small pipe-cleaner (or use pipe-cleaners like me)brush to get the grime off. I believe it’s a small price to pay for a filter that WORKS! The small fish we have in the water as food aren’t harmed by the powerful suction created near the water intake, either.

Overall best filter for the money (see update 2). Do your shopping – I found one at my local pet store for $50.00 and found one online for $25 with free shipping! With the one-year warranty, what do you have to lose?

*Beware if you have smaller turtles – it does create a ‘suction’ area just like other canister filters – and small turtles may become trapped.

UPDATE: 6 months later, this filter is still working like a charm! We had a small problem with the fliter not priming after a cleaning once, but it turned out that I had mixed up the way something went on, so it was my fault. After reading more, the ceramic blocks never need to be replaced, just rinsed, and the foam part doesn’t need to be replaced unless it’s showing wear. If the foam does need to be replaced, the replacement foam is around $4. After 6 months, we still haven’t replaced the foam! We are pleased with how well this filter works.

UPDATE2: My husband went to clean our fantastic turtle filter and dropped one of the pieces down the sink drain! I thought for sure I’d need to buy an entire new filter. I was excited to learn that ZooMed has a an assortment of replacement items for 501 filters! I didn’t need to buy a new filter, just a small $4 part! Also, the ceramic pieces are sold (if you hate cleaning yours) for around $6. Mine are on a year and show little wear. I’m so pleased with this purchase and quality of customer service from ZooMed!

Review by Professor Bubba for Zoo Med 501 Turtle Canister Filter
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This product has had strangely mixed reviews, from exuberant to downright hate mail. I bought it because I thought that the other canister filter I was considering would be too powerful and would churn up the water too much for my small turtles.

When you test a filter, you can’t just look at the water and say it works great; you have to test the water. Believe me, the turtles can tell the difference when there is a high ammonia content. You would too, if you were swimming in your own pee!

I’ve had this filter for 4 weeks. The first three weeks I could get no bio filtration at all, and the ammonia stayed at a high level. Then for the last week the filter has worked great and my ammonia is down at zero.

So I can highly recommend this product for a small tank normally used for baby turtles. What I do NOT recommend is the carbon inserts that go with the product! The insert is basically a disposable bag of activated carbon that is machined into smooth pellets. These pellets do a horrible job of absorbing the organics that they are supposed to control.

In the third week, I went to the aquarium store, bought a nylon bag, and filled it with over-the-counter activated carbon. These are basically raw chips of coal. The rough sides of the coal provide ample porous surface area for absorption. Also the activated carbon at the pet store comes a lot cheaper than the 501 carbon inserts.

You don’t know clean water until you see the difference between the pellets and the activated carbon chips; you’ll see the difference in just one day. But what’s more important is that one week later, my ammonia is down to zero.

Turtles create a LOT of ammonia. With the right carbon, this filter will do the job. The proof is in the testing.

Review by for Zoo Med 501 Turtle Canister Filter
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I have a red-eared slider and have tried many other filters at reasonable prices for a 20 gallon tank. It is a good buy for the money. This one so far is the best because all of the algae is in the tubes or in the filter kept on the outside of the tank. It is less stuff to clean. You will definitely need a small brush to clean the tubes and change the carbon once every two weeks. I tried cleaning the carbon filter and using it again but the tank does not stay as clean.

Review by G. D. Sullivan for Zoo Med 501 Turtle Canister Filter
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I recently received two hatchling ear sliders as a gift. Having a 35 gallon hexagonal tank already, we re-outfitted it for turtle usage (floating island, turtle-safe heater, submersible filter, dual heat lamps [night and daylight], thermometers, etc.) and turned everything on. The submersible “drop in” filter was terrible. It did a barely competent job of keeping the water clean and it was loud. That’s right, completely submerged, and it was louder than many over-the-back tank filters I have owned (came in a kit, so not a terrible suprise).

I obtained the 501, and now I wonder why I ever used another filter on any tank. This thing runs silent as the grave. Once the system gets any residual oxygen out of the lines, the only sound you hear is from the drip-tube (and if you angle the holes towards the back wall of the aquarium, you don’t hear a thing). The suction is strong enough to really pull waste from the gravel at the opposite end of the tank, and the water cleared in less than two hours from its formerly murky state.

This aquarium also houses feeder fish for the turtles, and the detrius can build up quite quickly. No problem for the 501, plus with the drip tube given sufficient height over the water, I really have no need for an air bubbler, as the surface oxygen exchange is excellent with such a high flow rate/pressure.

An excellent buy, I give this product my highest recommendation.

Review by Robin B. Winter for Zoo Med 501 Turtle Canister Filter
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I purchased it for a 20 gallon turtle tank. It has two chambers. One with the carbon container and ceramic pieces and the other chamber contains a hard foam wheel.

The unit draws and returns clear water very nicely. As an experiment, I removed the foam wheel and filled the chamber with polyester filer fiber, the stuff you use in a regular filter. To my amazement, the unit now filters small particles 3-5 times better than the foam wheel did, so this is what I now use. The bag containing the carbon can be replaced with a nylon stocking filled with the carbon you buy at a pet store, no need to buy the OEM.

This filter works better if you have a normal rectangular aquarium, since it will need to be in the center of the tank for optimum filtration. It would not work as well in a long tank as there is not enough water current to move far away particles to the filer.

Overall, for the money, it’s one teriffic filter, happy I got it.

With the addition of the filter fiber, it does the job even better.

I highly recommend this filter.