How much Filtration Speed is needed for your aquarium?

There are many types of Filters out there but they are all doing the same, serving the same purpose to your aquarium:

While most people think make water clean is the only purpose of a filter, actually the other two are equally important.

If the water does not flow or circulate properly in your Aquarium, it will be difficult to make it crystal clear and make way for problem like algae to appear and make glass dirty. So, how much of the current a filter should provide for your Aquarium? There is a rule that the filter should be somewhere from 5x – 10x the volume of water per hour. What does it mean? I’ll create a table below to explain the concept.

When you’re buying a filter, please look for this number base on the Aquarium volume you have at home. Try to also get a filter with adjustable flow so you can change it to the speed flow that suites the best. Because not only Aquarium size is the only factor, the type of fish you keep in there is as important as well. If your fish don’t like to swim in high current, you might want to lower the outlet a litter bit.

Wait, what should I do if my Aquarium is big, for example, 400L volume? Is there a 4000 L / hour filter out there? Well, there are pool filters or very strong filters of that size. But you can always combine a couple of filters, and place them in different locations in your Aquarium to make up the expected filtration speed.

For example, you can use 2 x 500L/h filters to make up 1000L/h filter instead of looking for one single 1000L/h filter.