Finding the right filter
One of the problems that we had with the Tetra Whisper Power Filter that we had is that the filter was making too much noise. This was because the water level was not high enough because the basking rock had to be out of the water. Whenever we would go to a pet store we would always look at different types of filters to see which one would work better for us. I didn't think that the Tetra Whisper Power Filter was strong enough to handle the job of cleaning the turtle tank. I have no doubts that it would have been fine if we were just using the tank for fish.
When we were looking for the filter we had the following guidelines. We wanted to make sure that the new filter was powerful enough to cycle enough water through the tank and hour. We wanted the filter to have the return water supply connected to some sort of rubber tubing to quiet the noise down. Lastly we looked at prices. I was prepared to spend about $100 as long as the filter worked well.
After looking for a couple of months we finally found what we were looking for. We found the H.O.T. Magnum filter at Petco and from the start we knew that this was the filter we were looking for. The Magnum was very powerful (filtering about 250 gallons per hour) and very quiet. The Magnum also has two tubes running from the front of it. One contains the intake water and the other contains the return water. We used a little bit of rubber tubing and were able to contour the filter perfectly to our needs. The H.O.T. stands for hang-on tank. The filter is mounted on the outside of the tank and the hoses hang on the inside of the tank to bring water back and fourth. The filter is very user friendly. I am able to disassemble the entire filter and clean each and every piece in about a half hour. The filter ended up costing about $70 dollars but was worth it. When we changed to this filter we went from cleaning the tank every 2 weeks to cleaning the tank every 6 to 8 weeks. Speaking of cleaning the tank scroll down for some tips on cleaning your turtle tank.
