I have an Eheim 2213 in a 29 gallon tank with 2 small turtles. It's about time for me to upgrade the tank to give them more room...
but the filter works EXCELLENT!!
I clean the filter about once every other week, and it takes me about 20 minutes to do it. Many people work too hard at cleaning them and they end up doing more harm than good. My filter has top layer of fine poly material. It's actually pillow stuffing from Wal-Mart. The next layer is a coarse foam pad that came with the filter. Below it is a gravel type of stuff.
When I clean it, I pull off the top of the canister, and lift out the basket that holds all the media. I dump the canister and rinse it in the sink. I either replace (if I have more) the white pillow stuffing. I rinse in hot tap water, the coarse foam. The gravel stuff, you DO NOT want to rinse in tap water. Personally, I rinse it maybe once every 3 months in DECHLORINATED WATER. This gravel stuff is what is intended to hold the beneficial bacterias, and chlorinated tap water will kill it. Besides, most the "poop" will not be picked up in the basket and will be left in the canister to be dumped out.
This entire process takes about 20 minutes.
Another big tip: Get a raphael catfish and make sure to give him a hiding spot that the turtles can't get into. This type of catfish is very reclusive. You likely won't see it out foraging even one time in 2-3 months...but you will notice that nothing stays on the bottom of the tank for long. They will eat turtle poop, and any food the turtles leave behind. They cost about $7 each and are sometimes not really easy to find. I have 2 and the bottom of my tank stays spotless.
Filters dont have the power to suck the poop up from the bottom of the tank so it just sits there as the toxins seep out into the water. The catfish will take care of it. The fish's poop is small enough that it will get stirred up by turtle movement and sucked into the filter.
