I've had this filter for about 6 months for my 75 gallon freshwater tank. It's my first canister filter, so I was s little intimidated at first not knowing how to set up or maintain it. I have to say that set up was a breeze. Easy to do, easy to understand and pretty quick. It has kept my tank sparkling clean and my fish ridiculously happy! So you know the bioload of my tank, I have:
5 red Irian rainbow fish
5 bosemani rainbow fish
5 turquoise rainbow fish
3 Congo tetras
5 kuhli loaches
1 male guppy :)
I clean the filter about every other month. I change all of the floss pads each time because they are always brown (tannins from the wood in my tank?) and they tend to be falling apart. I change out the carbon bag every time. I rinse the ceramic rings/bio media in chlorinated water. I change the black sponge as needed (not very often), usually I just rinse it out in chlorinated water. Cleaning the whole canister takes me about half an hour and is easy. The only hard part is how heavy it is when it's full of water. I have to get my husband to carry it to the sink for me! I use my filter in conjunction with an in line heater which has worked extremely well. I like the spray bar. The only issue I've had is the base of the canister cracked, presumably from the weight of it, but this is only superficial. It is not an area that is holding water. It's an extra plastic piece around the base. I contacted Penn Plax and they said they would send a replacement part. It's really not a big deal. I've noticed also that the Elite (which is what I have) only has black nozzles whereas the regular model has a black and a blue making it easier to distinguish between "in" and "out" hoses when disconnecting for cleaning. It's not a big deal, I tied a ribbon around the "in" hose, but I think it's weird that they didn't include that feature in the Elite. The elite came with lots of replacement media though which is nice. Very convenient.

Overall, I'm super happy with my purchase! I highly recommend this filter!

To start, I've been running the 1500 model on a 75 gallon freshwater tank for almost three months, and love it. I love it enough that I plan on buying another one to achieve that 10x an hour turnover that a cichlid tank really needs.

The pros:
-I have zero water quality issues with this filter. My tank has not experienced any noticeable spikes of ammonia, nitrates, etc that you would notice from a normal crap factory of an Oscar tank.
-Excellent flow rate. With the spray bar, I'm getting good surface agitation and a healthy level of oxygen for my ungrateful Cichlid
-The stackable filter trays are big enough for whatever filter media you could want in your tank. I'm currently running fine and course filter floss, bio balls, and a bag of carbon to clean up all my Oscar's mess.
- It only cost a hundred dollars, which left me with enough money left over to spend on rocks, since the Oscar destroys and uproots everything in the tank

The cons:
-Despite it's reliability, it feels somewhat fragile, so be careful on cleaning days and when setting it up.
-Priming the pump can be a pain in the ass. Fill it up beforehand to make things easier on you.
-It suffers from terrible bypass issues and lets a lot of fine particles by the filter trays back into the tank. Water discoloration is from the driftwood in the tank, not the filter. Honestly, this is the only reason it doesn't have five stars.

If you're needing a lot of filtration for cheap, this is a great filter. However, if you are anal about having crystal clear water, or just have the extra money, buy a comperable Fluval or Eheim filter.

I've been running this filter for about 9 months now on my hi tech 60 gal. planted tank and I'm pretty impressed. After the first cleaning I tossed the white pre filter pad, as the black bio pad does a fine job of polishing my aquarium water and is more durable. I tried the priming feature when I first set up the filter and found it to be kind of a PITA. Now after cleaning I fill the canister with water and rock it side to side a few times after restarting the filter like I've done on my old Eheims and Fluvals to clear any air trapped in the filter. I really like the multi section spray bar as it allows for adjusting the water flow across your aquarium. This filter runs very quietly and has a good media capacity, although I only run the black pad and one box of Fluval ceramic noodles in mine. So far this has been an excellent filter and has performed flawlessly. Penn Plax has really put out a fine filter with their Cascade line.

No issues or leaks at all with this! It works really well and I've had no problems at all.

I do have one tiny request. I wish that the exhaust tube could go lower into the tank. It's a little bit noisy when it shoots the water back into the tank unless you keep the water level topped off pretty high.

I do have a bit of a beef that depending on how you view this item, sometimes it says 1200 gph, which is definitely not true.

I purchased this canister filter for my 55 gallon aquarium 2 months ago. It is my first canister filter (I have always had the hang on the back filters). So far, I am very happy with my purchase. Initially, there was a bit of a learning curve. It does come with everything needed to start up, but I wanted to really customize it and that was harder than I thought it would be because with this filter, you have so many options with 4 trays to fill with media. I started with everything it came with and only added some ceramic rings for biological filtration. It was fairly easy to set up, though if you aren't familiar, the instructions come in very handy. Once I got it all set up, it worked great - it is very powerful. I just did a full cleaning of it last week for the first time and it was filled with all kinds of debris. I just rinsed most of the media in aquarium water from the water change, changed the white pad, added some new filtration products to the trays that I had researched and it was ready to go again. It is very quiet too which I love. Highly recommend!