EHEIM Classic 2215 External Canister Filter with Bio Media - Up to 92 Gallon Aquarium Filter for Freshwater & Saltwater Tanks - Perfect for Home, Office Fish Tanks & Aquatic Ecosystems

OKAY...I admit it. Ten or Fifteen years ago I was running a 90 gallon Cichlid tank and I had a BIG Eheim canister to filter the tank. I loved it. Sold it when I got out of the hobby; sold it with the tank. So all these years go by. Now I'm into Nano tanks. Planted Aquascapes. I'm being challenged and I love that part of it.There's a YouTube Video with IAPLC Grand Prize Winner Dave Chow giving a workshop on Takashi Amano style aquascaping. At one point during the YouTube video he. says: "Trial and error. And I have so many errors. You must find yours, and then, after that, you can find your methods". THIS is where I'm at. I have years in the aquarium hobby but I'm a rookie when it comes to live plant aquascaping and I am LEARNING and that's the fun part. Sometimes frustrating that's true but then the gratification ultimately comes. Anyway...back to EHEIM. Before I went back to EHEIM, I bought 3 canister filters from what is currently a very popular brand that competes against EHEIM. I was especially attracted to this brand because it has a heater housed right inside the canister filter. How cool is that? No need for an unsightly heater in your tank! But when I received the filters and started putting them together I felt they were cheap. I did not have a sense of quality like you get with EHEIM. I made a decision to return them. I am not going to name them because although I DID buy them I never used them in my tanks. So.... I'm running a 6.6 gallon cube; an 11 gallon long, a 16 gallon cube and a 22 gallon long. I know this EHEIM 2211 Classic is rated for up to a 40 gallon tank and I'm using it on much small tanks but it works because I can dial the flow way down for these small tanks. It's so easy. So do NOT be afraid of using an EHEIM 2211 classic for your small tanks. As canister filters go, the 2211 itself is small and does not seem out of line for a small tank at least for me. For me, it's EHEIM all the way. When I received that first EHEIM 2211 I immediately felt better. German made quality. Can't beat it with a stick IMHO. The EHEIM 2211 can handle all those tanks no sweat. And it's so freekin' QUIET! I'm running one in the living room 10 feet from my overstuffed chair that I reign from each evening and I hear NOTHING. Dead quiet. Now...let's talk about PRIMING these EHEIM canisters. There seems to be a lot of confusion and anxiety and stress over priming them but it's so simple that it's crazy ridiculous. I will tell you right now how to do it in just a few sentences. LIke any canister, you will take the top off and fill it with the media of your choice. It will come with media such as course filter pads, ceramic media, etc. On Amazon you can buy carbon pads and so much more. ...OR....you can just choose your own filter media. I just bought a bag or two of Poly-Fill Polyester Fiber that I'm going to use after the next cleaning to REALLY polish that water column! OKAY. We've got it filled with filter media, time to get it running. Time to prime this baby. So it's all ready to go right? You have the intake hose running to the bottom of the Eheim canister and the out-take discharge hose ready to discharge filtered water to the tank. So..hang that INTAKE hose over your tank wall into the water. I have an empty 5 gallon bucket on the floor. I have the EHEIM canister filter on the floor with the tank above. Take that DISCHARGE hose and give it a good SUCK. Water will flow up the intake hose into the EHEIM canister and fill that canister and then exit out the top discharge right into the discharge hose which I'm aiming into the bucket. It's plain old syphoning and it'll be the EASIEST syphon you ever did. NOW place your thumb over the end of the discharge hose and hang that over your tank wall so it's discharging into your tank. NOW plug the EHEIM in. VOILA! You are primed and running. If you hear some air gently move the EHEIM side to side rocking it gently. The air will pump out. I tell you it's the easiest canister PRIME you will ever do. With the whole thing put together you are basically just syphoning water through the canister and when it starts coming out the discharge you plug the canister in. It's really BASIC and that pretty much characterizes the EHEIM canister filter in a nutshell. It's BASIC. It WORKS. It's DEPENDABLE. QUIET. I don't know what more I can say. I know that there are others out there. Fluval makes good canisters for one example. I just have my preferences, I guess and for me, it's "Go EHEIM" or go home.