I personally with the messy fish opt for a 2250 it is a big bucket filter designed for tanks up to about 220 imp gallons.

Media wise I would fill it with ehfi substrat. Once this filter is managing the bioload remove all the media from the 2217 and put it in the 2250 and then fill the 2217 with sponges and filter wool.

What you will end up with is the 2250 doing the biological action which will only need cleaning about once a month and then the 2217 with all the mechanical filtration as this is the smaller filter it will be easier to manage the cleaning on this filter and you will probably only need to clean this filter every couple of weeks.

I works well for me on my heavily stocked 100 gallon tank. Water is normally crystal clear except for when I feed them then all hell breaks lose.

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Alan

Thweeerp!