Interpet Internal Aquarium Fish Tank PF2 Power Filter, Cleans Water, for Coldwater & Tropical Aquariums Up to 81 Litre, black/blue

Perfect for my fish tank

This has been in my tank for a week now, so far so good. The filter is powerful and you can control it ( turn up or down the flow) you can also have it putting air bubbles into the tank. It's definitely made the water more clean than my last filter. Only negative thing I could say is that it's a bit more bigger than my last filter. I'm really happy with it so far.

I've been keeping tropical fish for more than 30 years and owned numerous internal and external filters. I bought this one for my mother in law, who had a small tank (about 30 litres) and where the one that came with the tank was a bit too rubbish to use. The first thing I would say with internal filters of this size is that they are intended for pretty small tanks. For this filter I would say a 50 litre tank would be the absolute max. External filters are better but there aren't really any in the market for the smaller tanks, hence getting an internal is the way forward. Internal filters provide lots of water flow but don't always have very much filtration capacity. As with every internal and external filter, the media provided is very much optimised for ease of cleaning and replacing, rather than for filtration capability. As I say this is true of every brand I've ever used. The filter contains a small plastic compartment in which there is some ceramic media for biological filtration. The remaining space is filled with a sponge to perform mechanical filtration and a carbon infused sponge to provide chemical filtration. These are attached to a plastic holder which easily slides in and out of the filter for cleaning. If you are keeping a planted aquarium then I would dispense with the carbon sponge because activated carbon removes the minerals the plants use to grow. The carbon sponge only lasts a month or so and needs replacing around that time anyway. The few ceramic media in the filter is nowhere near enough to provide good breakdown of ammonia into nitrites and from nitrites to nitrates. It's also not a great quality media with not very much surface area for the aerobic bacteria that perform this job to grow. I replaced this media with Biohome media from UKfilterPro as this has a far greater surface area and contains beneficial minerals which are added in the production process. As for the mechanical filtration sponge, it does a decent job and some aerobic bacteria can grow on it, but I chose to replace the entire media with coarse, medium and fine pads and then added some more Biohome in the main body of the filter. For this I removed the plastic holder and cut the media to shape to fit in. Coarse at bottom, medium next, fine on top of that and then the biological media. The end result of these changes is that water quality is far better but doing this means having to buy new media. Generic filter sponges are very cheap but really good quality media for your aerobic bacteria is a bit more expensive. I bought the sponges for a couple of £s each and I'll do 3 or 4 filters for that. I bought £10 worth of Biohome and that will do about 4 filters of this size too. So not expensive and nothing I've put in needs throwing away and replacing, just cleaning. It's not really any harder to clean once you've cut the new sponges down to size either. For anyone experiencing noise from their filter, this is almost certainly going to be air trapped in the system. This means water is not flowing seamlessly from the inlet at the bottom to the impellor in the top of the filter head. This can mean your filter is blocked with large amounts of detritus, or the rubber inlet membrane in the bottom of the filter is blocked or even damaged. This membrane should be removed and cleaned every few months. It is breaks it can be replaced but running the filter without it will result in inconsistent flow and air pockets. Unless you have very, very good filtration, water changes are a necessity. It requires a good source of anaerobic bacteria to break down nitrates in the water and in a small internal filter this is never going to happen. There is too much oxygen for the growth of good bacteria that flourish in environments which lack oxygen. I would recommend 10% water change every 7 days but more if the tank is more populated. Nitrates are what causes algae, so if you are getting a lot of it, you will need to do slightly bigger water changes. It might also mean you are overfeeding the fish, there are too many fish in the tank and you are leaving the light on too long. Waste food and fish waste become nitrogen based waste and that will lead to high nitrates one way or another. I also own a PF4 in a 11o litre tank and that runs well, (with the same media changes). A tank of that size could use an external filter where there will be room for a lot more media.

Good

Had bought a new tank after the old one sprang a leak! Had used Interpet PF1 filters for years. The new tank came with a Juwel filter which I tried and gave up with as the tank went mucky after a few days. I watched Youtube videos and sought advice from the guy in the Aquarium shop, but still couldn't get on with it. I ended up putting my old Interpet PF1 in with the Juwel filter, which helped, however took up stacks of room. I then bought the larger Interpet PF2 filter and her tank has remained much cleaner. Happy fish and owner!

I bought this Interpet PF2 with a tank ages ago; it is very efficient with a sponge and a carbon (to avoid smelly tank;-) It was a 65 L ish tank, but this filter can deal with up t 80L,providing you have not over populated your aquarium. But the PF2 it must be said-CAN BE noisy if you place it as high as they say, and "full blast" Very easy to use and to care for. I was so happy with my PF2 that when it died, I bought the same one from the ARK STORES UK- Unfortunately, It stopped workinng after six months.I found it strange as Interpet is a great brand. That left me annoyed and in a bit of a panic as Tropical Fish (messy) cannot stay without a filter etc.I had to borrow one fro my local pets store ;-)! When I contacted the Ark Stores team, they were very helpful and told me to send the faulty item back in order to check the state it was in etc. They then agreed that there was a fault and refunded the cost of P&P before sending me a new PF2 Interpet very quickly, without fussing.Not the type of company to just take your money and ignore you afterwards, so I thought I should let the potential clients know ;-)! Bottom line; Great product and fantastic customer service from the Ark Stores =Recommended!!!

I purchased this filter after my last one packed up. I thought I would "upgrade" to a filter better than the one that came with the fish tank I purchased a couple of years ago, as I struggled to find replacement filter sponges etc recently. This PF2 filter was put in my 75 litre tank, which houses a couple of Gourami, a group of Danios Rasboras &Tetras and x2 shrimps. Great performance, easy to clean and super super quiet! There's the good bits out the way.... I have left it a day before coming back to the tank and found that this PF2 filter has sucked up x3 of my Rasboras and killed them. The gaps in the lower filter chamber, the flow controls and around outlet pipe all suck in water, not just where it should! This seems to have been the areas that have caught the smaller fish and killed them. All the other fish are stronger swimmers and a little larger in size, so I hope they're going to be OK and survive the filter of death! However, I would suggest that if you have ANY fish that are smaller than 2-3 cms, do not buy this filter as it will eat them up! Go for a smaller filter made for micro/nano tanks.