I enjoyed this post. Minus the overwhelming bias for Eheim, I've purchased 2 FX5's for (drumroll..... 299.99 each from Amazon!) for my 150gal African Chick Tank.
In the Aquarium Hobby Invention is the Creation of Necessity. I'll look into the mods and judge if it is something I want to do.
Primary interest to me is creating flow. Using sand as a substrate, I need something that will kick up the detris on the Aquarium Floor to be sucked up by the Intakes. I'll have the filters on timers opposite the Auto Feeding cycle, this should give the fish ample time to gobble the food prior to being sucked into the uptake. Especially with the 2-3 minute Purge Whatchamacallit.
Prior to these 2 FX5s I've had 3 Rena XP3s on this tank. I like the XP3 as it is easy to use and I clean two skip one. Although I think the better method would have been to have each dedicated to Mechanical Filtration, two further dedicated to Biological Filtration and one dedicated to Chemical Filtration. The only prob here is pulling out all your bio material each time you wash the foams of the mechanical.
I learned the lesson the hard way about cleaning the sand with a water pump, disturbing all the sand at once... the release of those bubbles killed my fish! Nitrates skyrocketed, and I looked stumped as to why my fish were dying one at a time...
My plumbing plan is to plumb a 1" PVC manifold with 1/2" inline outputs onto the back of the Aquarium 1 " above the sandbed floor. This will hopefully in turn keep the detris circulated and suspended on the tank bottom for suck up into the intakes.
If anyone can direct me to posts on flow in large tanks, I'd appreciate it.
I also think this should be a sticky.
In the Aquarium Hobby Invention is the Creation of Necessity. I'll look into the mods and judge if it is something I want to do.
Primary interest to me is creating flow. Using sand as a substrate, I need something that will kick up the detris on the Aquarium Floor to be sucked up by the Intakes. I'll have the filters on timers opposite the Auto Feeding cycle, this should give the fish ample time to gobble the food prior to being sucked into the uptake. Especially with the 2-3 minute Purge Whatchamacallit.
Prior to these 2 FX5s I've had 3 Rena XP3s on this tank. I like the XP3 as it is easy to use and I clean two skip one. Although I think the better method would have been to have each dedicated to Mechanical Filtration, two further dedicated to Biological Filtration and one dedicated to Chemical Filtration. The only prob here is pulling out all your bio material each time you wash the foams of the mechanical.
I learned the lesson the hard way about cleaning the sand with a water pump, disturbing all the sand at once... the release of those bubbles killed my fish! Nitrates skyrocketed, and I looked stumped as to why my fish were dying one at a time...
My plumbing plan is to plumb a 1" PVC manifold with 1/2" inline outputs onto the back of the Aquarium 1 " above the sandbed floor. This will hopefully in turn keep the detris circulated and suspended on the tank bottom for suck up into the intakes.
If anyone can direct me to posts on flow in large tanks, I'd appreciate it.
I also think this should be a sticky.
