Can a fish filter be too large?

You can always buy another one if you need. You can put two on a tank. I would get what you need like a 20 gallon filter for a 10 gallon tank is good. Then If you get a bigger tank you just add a nother 20 gallon filter. I like the over the back filters. They seem to work the best.

Are you planning on starting a fresh or salt water aquarium? In either case you can not go too big with a filter, the more water volume you have the less contaminated the water will get, however if you are starting a saltwater aquarium I strongly advise against an undergravel filter. Undergravel filters are inefficient and will release alot of nitrates into the water possibly killing your fish, invertibrates and any corals you may have.

Hi! I have a 30 gallon tank and I wasn't sure of the size of it when I bought the filter, so I bought one for a 30 to 50 gallon tank. It works great, but when I feed the fish flake food, it does tend to get drawn up into the filter flow. And it could draw small fish in, too. I lost a small blue tetra because it was caught in the filter uptake.

You really can't over filter a tank, but a 55 gallon filter on a 10 gallon would probablly put out too much power for the fish :) Usually when getting a filter, add a 0 at the end of the gallon size. If it's a 10 gallon, you want at a minimum 100 gallons per hour output for a filter. A 55 gallon, at least 550 gph. Then I recommend doubling that number-100 to 200 gph, 550-1000 gph for the best filtration. All my tanks, with the exception of the 10 & 15 gallons, I run 2 filters on to achieve adequate filtration. PLus, I like having 2 filters in case one breaks and a few other reasons. I'd go with a HOB(hang on the back) filter. Stay away from the undergravel ones, they just cause more problems, and they're so old fashioned lol. If you're using a 20 gallon tank, I'd recommend one of the Penguin or Aqua Clear filters. Aqua Clear's are best, because they have room to add extra filter media like sponges or bacteria bio balls. When you get the larger tank, depending on it's size, the smaller filter you buy now may work ok for it along with another filter, I'd go with a canister filter for that choice, especially if it's a larger 50+ gallon tank.

We have a big tank so we have a power filter and an underwater filter system. If you have a 10 gallon tank, the power filter should be enough. You can go to walmart and they have the right size power filter for a 10 gallon tank. If you buy a new tank a lot of them come with set up. I know that is how we bought our big tank and it came with the power filter and the underwater filter system. They do have 10 gallon kits to...you can look and see what they come with and that should be enough for your tank. They sell most everything separate.

I had different sizes of tanks. From what I have learned it is better to buy the filter that is for the size tank that you have. If the filter is too strong for the fish they will not get the nutrients they need because the filter will remove everything if it is for a tank that is not the size of yours. I had both the power filter and under water filter. I prefer the power filter. I noticed with the under water filtration system everything wasn't removed. My fish tank had begun to smell really bad. We used to vaccuum the tank every two weeks and it still smelled bad. Finally we took everything out the tank and looked under the under water system and the water was black. I hope this helps. Does anyone else know anything about the under water system?