I also run an Oase 250 on a UNS 90L! I agree completely. Went with it because of excellent reviews, prefilter, and thermo option for built in heater.
That was my first serious tank and I overestimated the importance of a heater, so don't take advantage of that really. Also not super impressed with the prefilter...mainly because there's not a huge added convenience for me, not as much as I thought there would be. I know Oase's stands have the slide out drawer, but unless you're rocking their stand or a really cool custom stand, you're pulling that whole canister out to change/clean the prefilter due to it being the height of the canister.
Other impressions with the Oase:
1. It is 100% underpowered. Haven't been able to figure out a good powerhead supplement in the 90L with the small height of the tank, I run an Eheim skim 350 with it for better agitation but it's not super ideal. Blows my back row around even on the lowest setting.
2. No air trap issues like alot of people seem to experience, at least after the first month they went away.
3. The way the interior of the prefilter chamber is setup it's kind of a pain in the ass to clean after a few months of buildup
4. Never had to go through customer service, which is a great thing, just adding because I can't comment on that and it's a huge piece of buying any equipment as integral as a filter imo. Warranty, customer service availability and helpfulness, parts availability, etc. I give a significant amount of weight to the "how many other people are using this" if for no other reason than it'll be that much easier to diagnose potential problems if I can find 100 threads about a given topic versus 1.
I mostly like the Oase, but for the premium price they carry I don't think I'd purchase another one...at the same time, I wouldn't replace the 250 that I have (not yet anyway)
The 60p has one of the ADA superjet ss canisters. My primary reason for going with this one was easy: it was free
Impressions with the ADA:
1. Quiet as hell
2. I hate having two different sized hoses for inlet/outlet, I'm sure there's excellent design behind it and it works well but it bothers me a little
3. I can't fathom why people love the ss canisters, of any make, aside from aesthetics maybe. It looks pretty on the minimalist ada stand for sure. But it's a pain in the ass to clean because, ya know, it's basically a large, narrow steel bucket haha.
4. It's effective. Never had a single issue with flow on this tank, I do need to suck siphon to start, but very briefly and the pump does the rest. It never has air traps, never stalls after w/c and restarting, etc.
I like the ADA canister alot. I would never buy one strictly because of price, but that's just my take on it. I wouldn't replace this filter either, I'll keep it on this tank no matter what I do with it.
For those of you that were giving me good ideas on my 4820 filtration thread, I decided to go with the AquEel suggestion.
Reasons I went with aquael:
1. Media baskets reported to be really high quality, stack together securely and easily w no bypass, there's alot of them, and most importantly the straightforward shape..I can cut out a foam square and shove it in there versus what I'd have to trim a sponge to fit the fluval 407s I was looking at.
2. Have you seen that prefilter setup? We'll save final judgement til they're delivered and I can mess with them, but my expectations are that it's pretty badass (oh no, this is exactly how I sounded when I bought the Oase
) it's a straight square that sits on the top of the canister in a separate compartment, and is designed to allow you to change it while the filter's still running. Pretty cool, I've seen a few people do it on review videos with 0 leaks. 100% more convenient than the Oase prefilter at first glance for sure, also worth taking into consideration that it has much less surface area than the Oase filter...not sure how much of a real difference that will actually make but like I said, worth thinking about for sure.
3. I did think it was standard 16/22mm hosing, a big win over something like a fluval with ribbed hoses in non-standard sizes. On further research...early last year they released an upgraded version 3 of all three filters in the ultramax range; the 2000, which is what I ultimately got because of a massive turnover rate (rather have more and not need it I guess?) originally did have 16/22mm connections, but the update version now has 19/25mm. Is it a big deal or not? Well, I guess we'll see. I can run 3/4 to 5/8 reducers, which have so far been hard for me to find that look to be decent quality/provide a solid connection, and then run all 16/22 hose anyway. Probably what I'll do. But would have been nice to have 16/22 from jump and not mess with any more adapters, connectors, potential points of failure, etc.
4. Combined flow rate on two of these will give me around 8-10x turnover rate, at absolute worst. Like I said, better to have it and not need it was my logic there.
Excited to get the filters, and I'm planning on doing a review thread once I get them too. It was a little hit or miss tracking down a couple people who run these and I couldn't find too much definitive info on them outside of youtube videos so I'd definitely like to post up some details here when they arrive. We'll see what size hose they come with too, hopefully both canisters are the same size!
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