bucket filter water level question

[Rob M-O]

I made a bucket filter according to Fresh Bait's great thread. 
Since the drain line creates a siphon , the bucket cycles through a fill and drain sequence and that just didn't strike me as right.  So I drilled a small hole in the drain line to break the siphon so it's more of a gravity drain. Except now the water completely covers my filter elements 100% of the time.

Is it ok that my filter elements are covered with water all the time? 

[Burtess]

So it sounds like what you had before was somewhat of a "wet / dry" filter where the media would be wet when submersed and exposed to the air when not.  This is a good way to grow nitrifying bacteria.  What you have now is similar to a standard aquarium filter, like a canister or hang on back,  where the media is always submerged.  No problem with that either as the water will carry enough oxygen to promote more than enough bacteria growth to keep your ammonia and nitrite levels at 0.

Burt

[FRESH-BAIT]

When I built the system it had the capability to do the cyle draining via gravity suction if the outlet drain was to small.  By stepping up the size of your oulet drain you're filter won't cycle like that.  Whats happing is your outlet isn't allowing the water out fast enough to keep up with the water being pumped in.  The cycling causes the system to become a wet/dry as Burt had stated which is very good at creating the benefictial bacteria.  However with the filter media completely covered it still functions in filtering out your large debris and creating a habitat for your beneficial bacteria.  if your worried about catching all your large debris you can stack more blue filter material on top of your stack to get it above the water line. 
Lets see some more pics of your setup

Freshbait

[1moslab]

the filter being wet than dry is more efficient than covered in water think natures water filter witch is water in a stream going over rocks.cool idea