Aquarium World

The Fluval U1 internal filter is fairly new on the market. The marketing says it is a quiet and powerful filter. The spec says it can be used in up to 55L and has a flow rate of 250L per hour.

I have been testing one of these in a small tank with just two fish in and a couple of plants. The tank is well established.

First impressions

Looks ok. Feels sturdy enough. The sucker pads locate well (on of my biggest hates is the cheap suckers on small equipment as they never stay put).
Dead easy to assemble.

First use

Its certainly powerful initially. It moved a lot of water and I was concerned it was going to stir the tank up a lot but once I got it dialed in it was fine. It did take a bit of trial and error to get the flow rate and the air rate set but nothing too hard. One trick I did find was to adjust the depth under water to get the air rate right.

1 Month on

Irritations. Whist it is still quiet it loses its power quickly. The filter gets clogged very easily. Im having to keep a lot of water ready to clean the filter it needs doing that often. The advertised flip top does not flip with the filter in place! So every time you have to remove the whole filter all the way before you can get to the foam inside.
With evaporation the water level falls and so the air rate also changes and every few days it does need adjusting again.

Overall

It is a nice cheap small filter. It is whisper quiet. It does the job. But it does need a lot of maintenance.
I would still say its a good buy, but there may be better.