Much needed video. Keep us updated. Love UGFs. Been using them since the 80s. They need to make a comeback. IMO people getting overly concerned with adding chemicals and having perfect parameters vs letting the tank do its thing with an UGF. My 125 has an UGF, plus 1 HOB filter. Ran them for a week and started adding fish. Up to 75 fish a year later and only lost a handful. I measured O Parameters and only a handful of plants. Good luck to everyone in the hobby.

Love my UGF on my 46G bowfront thanks for the update.

Great video. I really like UGFs. Tanks look awesome

Been converting all my tanks
Back to UGF, they do what there supposed to do and do it well

Back in the 80s we would put polymat over UGF plates to guard against plant roots . It worked great ! Welcome to the club

I finally got my second tank setup, 40g breeder. I had been wanting to try an UGF based on plant growth Sweet Johnny’s Pond & Aquarium was showing on his channel. Then I saw your vids and it pushed me over the top. Unfortunately I was a couple months too early or I would’ve tried the aquarium coop UGF. I went with penn plax.
I put a thin layer of lava rock over the plate, then some Flourite Red, and then a couple inches of gravel. It’s only been going for around a month now but the water is very clear and plants seem to be doing great. Unfortunately I’m not able to view it from below.
My prior experience was a 55g with gravel, HOB, and sponge filter. Around 9 months in the plants (cal, crypts) started finally growing.
Around the 1 year mark I upgraded to a 90g and went with finer gravel and two HOBs. That has been running for around 1.5 years and plant growth has been poor. I was thinking it was potentially my light as the 90g is a couple inches taller than the 55. But I had also been questioning whether it’s the fine gravel, so it’s interesting you also touched on that in the video.
And the other persons comments about UGF circulation only being around the uplift tube is interesting. If everyone gets good plant growth with UGF and there isn’t in fact much circulation it must mean it’s the gravel substrate?
Anyways, looking forward to seeing how my 40g evolve. And looking forward to more experiments/videos from you. Keep up the great work!

Wow ! I thought undergravel filter plates were old School? Sometimes going back to the basics is best! Now you got me thinking !!

Try using a shop vac on the uplift tube to pull all the silt and mulm out in one shot.

I've never had much success with UGF's with other substrates, only gravel. Three of my tanks use half a plate. They are great for fry tanks. No intake to endanger fry or getting sucked up like hob or canister filters. Similar in many ways to sponge filters. If you use gravel substrate, they are really easy to clean and rarely clog. I check all power heads every two weeks. Pull them off, clear any debris off the intake, and set them back on the lift tube. Personally I recommend redundancy in filters. I almost always use more than one type of filter on every tank. The school aquarium has a big canister filter and 4 power heads. When the fish dig, it's going to circumvent the UGF in some places, but since we have 4 filter plates and the canister as back up, it's the clearest aquarium I've ever kept. I can't speak to plant health, but I can see that rooting plants would grow well in the mulm that accumulates in the gravel.

Try putting a hose through the uplift to drain the the waste and possibly get rid of the air pockets from the under grave filter, then top up the water- boom water change and under gravel filter clean at the same time as long as you do the first part slowly 👍🏻if you or anyone out there tries this pls let me know and call it the “joe ponytail method” 🤘🏻😎🤘🏻. I’ve just subscribed and I’m loving the channel 🫡

My first “big tank” when I was a kid back in the 80’s had an under gravel filter.  I bought the setup used out of the classified ads in the newspaper.  It worked ok, but I still had to gravel vac constantly.  I just don’t like gravel as a substrate, I much prefer sand or bare bottom.  I’m all for innovation, but I’d rather see people putting more time and effort in things like significantly more affordable large capacity canister filters or a sponge filter that is easy to remove from your tank without getting detritus everywhere.

I have a 5-6 cm gap underneath my undergravel filter plates. In that space is bio media.

Sand and UGF are just not a great combo, the filter has a tendency to cause the sand to draw tight and restrict water flow and plant growth. Best substrates are safe-t -sorb, natural scent free non-clumping cat litter and ECO complete (red or black). Additionally, most UGFs will need support of some kind underneath, I use lava rock as it helps build good bacteria. Can't speak to aquarium coop UGF, as I haven't used them. Also if you use a colander and dry sift the substrates mentioned above(except eco complete) that will elevate your dust issue and need for weed cover.  Additionally, I use power heads of 210gph or less as it seems to allow the substrate to absorb more of the nutrients for the plants helping them to grow and use the detritus faster so lees clog in the long run. I have never gravel vac and tanks do great. Keep experimenting... that's what makes the hobby FUN!

I've commented on other channels about UGFs. I did dye experiments a long time ago and you only end up getting flow around the uptake. The rest of the plate gets micro sedimentation and detritus debris and clogs. The flow thru filter concept, whether its a UG or Canister or sponge is very in inefficient for developing large aerobic bacteria colonies. I would conclude that your tanks are polished because you have plenty of flow, combined with lots of surface area from the plants, rocks, driftwood, and sides of the tanks. This gives you efficient surface area  aerobic slime coat colonization. Coupled with regular water changes one can sustain large scalable fish populations.

I am the filterless lunatic (hydraulic engineer by profession).
Thanks for sharing. 🐠

In the 70s we used undergravel filters in all our tanks in the aquarium store we ran.  We had a large air compressor in a back room to supply air.  At that time it was believed that the proper sized gravel was the key, as well as the depth of the plates.  The common issues were plates getting clogged eventually so the tank had to be taken apart to clean under them.  Also, I found that plants did not grow well.  I thought there was too much water flow through the gravel. Of course, we did not run experiments to test any hypotheses. Currently some of the tanks in my house have been set up for ten years.  They all have plants that need to be harvested such is the growth. I run sumps on the larger tanks and an HOB on the smaller tank (55 gal).  Water changes are monthly at minimum.  I don't try and grow plants that are not easy.  I am focused on the fish.

I have a 75 gallon with UGF  with power heads for 27 years maintaining perfect balanced conditions.  DUDE  Of course your huge heavy rocks are affecting the UGF crushing it upsets even flow.  All your rocks is counter productive  robbing all the surface area.  Why would you cover the bottom not allowing the substrate to breathe. Should be common sense  Do away with all or most of the rocks you can’t pull water thru rocks.