LAQUAL 5 Gallon Aquarium Filter with Surface Skimmer, Small Quiet Fish Tank Filter, Biochemical Cotton Filtration & Adjustable Water Flow, Waterfall Design for Increasing Oxygen, Hang on Back Filter

I’m using this for my small 20 cube tank. In the tank, I have live plants, soil, and dragon rocks. Planning to get a betta fish soon. It’s made of plastic. I used my own filter media and cut the sponge to fit in (3rd picture). When I saw many negative reviews, I noticed they didn’t follow the directions such as minimum water level, etc. You also need to fill the filter with water before plugging in. It’s working perfectly as expected. The filter doesn’t make a sound after properly starting. It’s cheap too! If it’s broken, I will buy the same product. In the picture, I intensionally blocked the outlet with my plant hanger to slow down the water flow, but you can also adjust it without doing so. I didn’t use the skimmer because my new betta doesn’t seem like it. Without the skimmer and blocked water flow, he swims peacefully and doesn’t swish due to water flow Update after 1 week of use: Still five stars. I didn’t use the skimmer at the first time, but noticed there is some oily surface. Added skimmer, and it works fine. Attached the video for sucking up the floating plants. It removed the oils on the surface and my betta swims ok.

This is the littlest filter that could! It has been filtering the water in a heavily planted 7 gallon tank for a year now and shows no signs of slowing down! The population is limited to a Beta female and some unfortunate snails but plant detritus is picked up and I am not even using the extension tube that came with it. I use pieces of water polishing material and they absolutely let me know that the filter is working because they pick up all that yucky stuff. I clean using some straw brushes. Note that the knob you turn to increase or decrease the flow does come out for cleaning so the tubing is not as hard to clean as one might think at first. The biggest “con” is that the motor cannot be pulled out for cleaning but since the impeller can, this is not a real impediment to longevity, the straw brushes fit right around the stick that remains when you pull the impeller out and presto! It is a bit finicky when it comes to water level but it is a small filter and I think that is to be expected. There is no media except their media for this filter and that is not an issue for me because of the heavily planted environment but someone else might not be willing to put up with the smell for a few days during the early days and might want to use charcoal and this may become an issue.

Product is poorly made and does not work at all. Pretty noisy as well. I can live with the noise if it worked.

The downstem is several pieces so you can adjust it to what you need and water height, I DIY'd the media to include bio balls and a sponge and trade off rinsing them out. This fits on the back of my 2.5 gal mini bow aquarium by placing an unwrapped coin towel between the filter and outside of the tank to wedge it in the right place. Looks really nice and works well. If it makes noise I just open the back and turkey baster some tank water into the first chamber and it quiets right down. Prefilter sponge keeps shrimps out of the filter, easily rinsed to reuse.

I bought two of these filters, I really like how quiet they are and also like the flow adjustment. The only reason for leaving a 3 star review is because of the skimmer, it does a very poor job without modifications, the skimmer sits too deep below the surface and basically cannot remove the surface film, I blocked two tiny holes on top of the skimmer floats to make it float higher on the surface and that seems to help a little more, but not enough, I got a different brand filter that the skimmer do work great. However, is not bad for the price.

I find this filter a great option for my 5 and ten gallon tanks. It's simple to set up and easy to maintain. Others have complained that it is noisy which I believe is from not using the little round disk on the outside of the tank to make the filter level if not actually tilting forward just a bit. We have these on four tanks and it's a great option for an inexpensive filter that works as well as the more popular expensive name brands. It's made of clear plastic which makes it so easy to see the condition of the filter medium. I usually have to prime them upon start up and after cleaning but that's easy enough to do. My betta tanks are perfect for these filters because I can slow the water down enough for the fishes not to be bothered by the flow, All in all I have to say that this is probably the best think I have ever bought on amazon over the last 25 years!

The pump did not work, and it was noisy. The quality of the pump was actually very nice. I’ve gone through my fair share of pumps and this little one is made fairly well, but it didn’t work and was very noisy. I returned it. Not sure if I got a lemon and they all are noisy, or if the excessive noise was from a faulty pump (and a properly working one would be quiet).

Works great, looks good, quiet

I bought this and another brand for my 2 5 gallon rimless aquariums. The other one did not work and I ended up purchasing a second one of these. They fit beautifully work well and the flow can be adjusted for my Bettas. They’re super quiet. I would recommend these for sure. I have changed out the media for my own and cut up the sponge so it wasn’t the only filter media. But I don’t see that as a con as I could still use original media if I chose too.

Dont buy this garbage filter, within 15 minutes of running, the motor was so hot that I couldn’t even touch it, as you can see in the picture, the motor was almost gonna blew up, thank god i checked it, wish i could give it 0 star

Do not buy this waste of money

Works great so far and very easy to set up and clean!

I really wanted to like this little filter unit, it has nice feature ideas, but terrible execution. The skimmer which is what I wanted it for, just would not float properly (I even tried adding pieces of foam to try to help it float better) and instead would sit too low below the water surface to actually skim. There’s also no guard/grille on the skimmer part. I woke up to find one of my beautiful red Chili Rasboras horribly mangled and unalived inside this filter because the skimmer did not float properly and sat too low below the water’s surface with no guard/grille to keep small fish out. This filter's skimmer is deadly for small fish. I hope they will redesign the skimmer part, to float better and to have a safety grille/guard which prevents small fish from accidently getting sucked into the skimmer tube and into the filter impeller. I'm so sad one of my lil fish had to go out in such a horrid way.