I've picked up some cheap fluval's om ebay as backups. I set them up without media just to make sure they work and put them back in the box. Easy enough to tank them with the live media from broken filters..
Thanks for the replies. I trying the swiss tropicals tower block filters out and nixing the canister for now. Apparently, it takes a while for these filters to get to work but I like the theory behind them. The problem is that since my filter was off for about a week, my water turned green.