inTankFluval Spec and Evo Media Basket - FLSMR

While this product is way overpriced and not really necessary for this tank, it is great quality and a great upgrade to the stock filter block. The skimmer is pretty useless, it is made of what feels like a playing card, but the basket itself is the total opposite. It allows you to really increase biological filtration and you can use so many different types of mechanical. Really the only drawback is the price.

You have to keep in mind how niche this product is, and that it's probably hand-made.The craftsmanship is fantastic. Yes, its expensive, but nice things are expensive and this is a nice thing. Functionally, my Betta tanks are much more stable than they were before due to this upgrade I have two spec 3's, one of which has the upgrade, the other uses the stock foam. The tank which has the InTank basket is much more stable and established at a much quicker rate than my other tank. Because of the low water volume of the Spec 3, I find modifying the filtration to be almost necessary, and this basket is a clean and easy way of doing that.

Nice to have different compartments to put different filter media in but only problem is sometimes water goes down the front behind the filtration on top. It helps to have higher water level in tank so water rushes past that gap to reach the filter media.

the image is exactly what you get, except for the one image where they show the 3D printed flow diverter that doesn't actually come with this product, but im assuming is supposed to actually be an image of their skimmer, which if you own a spec V you will have to trim down so that the back compartment doesn't run dry if you deal with a lot of evaporation. After contacting the dealer this item comes from Amazon stock, so you will not receive the diverter which, while a bummer, is available as a separate purchase on Amazon for ~12$. or you can read a little further for the fix I found.This product is a great idea with middling execution, it fits snugly on the sides and the back, but leaves ~1/8" of gap in the front, which water will happily follow instead of actually going into the media box. The reason it cant fit completely snug on all sides is because of the corner reinforceing plastic bits that fluval puts on the spec V. If they made it to juzt outside of exact dimensions then it wouldn't fit due to the interference. The plug for the overflow is also slightly larger than the actual dimensions of the overflow hole, so some filing will be needed to make sure that it fits, overall about 10 minutes of work for something that, honestly, does work better than what i was using (a rubber usb plug), it also looks a lot more pleasant to the eye.But now onto why you need extra air tubing handy, it just so happens that aquarium air tubing is ran in 1/8" size as well, and you can easily block off that gap in the front by ~95% and solve your water flow issue. knowing how much hose you get in pretty much any packaging, it should be a non-issue to have ~5 inches of extra that you have no idea what you would do with otherwise.So with all I've said why 5 stars? Because the dealer got back to my email in less than 24 hours with an honest response, and because the problems that most people run into are solved fairly easily with what would probably already be on hand.

Overpriced? Certainly. But it's damn sexy. Note, the sides of the tank are not solid, so with this insert you will see into your filter.With this basket I was able to change to the following config : polyfiber over the biomedia that came in the top, matrix in the middle, and purigen in the bottom. The middle shelf is not attached, so you do have that option to remove the shelf and have a small and large compartment.I had mixed results with the included skimmer. It definately reduced the film on the surface but also greatly reduced the flow of water going into the filter area even though I removed most of the cutout. I am no expert so I simply leave this as an observation.