Aquarium Tank Filters
Sunday, December 6th, 2009aquarium tank filters
Basics of freshwater aquarium filters, heaters, the life cycle, live plants, food, cleaning and Chemistry
AQUARIUS:
Start with the big an aquarium as you can afford. There is a very basic principle (this only applies to beginners), which is to have 1-2 inches of fish LIMIT gallon aquarium filter body. Goldfish are dirty and fatter, so it would triple this with them (3 "). This applies only to an aquarium standard rectangular.
Obviously, fish need more tank width and length. I reduce the amount of fish in proportion to the gallons in a tank height or hexagonal aquarium.
Remember, many fish have been purchased may grow much larger than the size of your original purchase (eg, goldfish), so keep this in mind as well.
FILTERS:
I always recommend two filters minimum per aquarium for redundancy and to improve biological (denitrifying) filtration. For a small aquarium, a combination of a wing on the back and a sponge filter. Or a sponge filter and an internal power filter. You want to make sure and rinse the sponge or cartridge in the aquarium water used to maintain its beneficial bacteria for biological filtration.
Other filters of note include boat, wet / dry, gravel, and fluidized bed.
There are four types of filtration:
Biological removal of nitrogenous wastes (ammonia, etc), which is the type more important.
Mechanics; the removal of large debris (organic and inorganic) before it can go through the nitrogen cycle (organic)
Chemistry; The removal of chemical contamination by carbon, zeolite or many other products. This becomes less important in a healthy aquarium set up.
Germacidal; the use of UVC or ozone to kill disease pathogens and control the redox potential.
HEATER:
Most Tropical Fish or at a temperature between 76 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit. (Discus prefer warmer).
Goldfish do not need a heater.
I recommend 25 watts for every 10 degrees of temperature environment that need to raise the temperature of the aquarium. EX: If your house is 68 degrees and you have a 40 gallon aquarium, to a temperature of 78 degrees you need a heater 100 watts.
BIO-CYCLING:
Your aquarium will not be in the biological filtration than 6 weeks (or more). To start your biological filtration, There are many products available by bicycle, for example, "Cycle" by Hagen. My success with these products is mixed at best, it is very difficult for bacteria aerobic bacteria that are necessary to cycle your tank to live in a sealed container stored at room temperature and die very quickly without oxygen.
I prefer to add gravel and / or a sponge or filter cartridge used in another aquarium.
This method of adding media is much faster (which still have to take it easy), and offers all the necessary bacteria, the only negative is adding disease pathogens to your aquarium, but rarely have encountered this problem.
We have used this method for keeping track our aquarium for years and never lost a fish to ammonia or nitrite poisoning.
Another method is to aggregate in a cycle of pouring scented ammonia in the aquarium (3-5 drops per gallon of pure ammonia) so that the level of ammonia to 4-5 ppm. Then it takes about 3-8 weeks for the aquarium to cycle. Although this method is growing in popularity, I would not recommend it, not because it does not work (it does), but because human nature is to want to add fish before the 3-8 weeks is needed for this method.
The method of adding the media is much faster (which still have to take it easy), and offers all the necessary bacteria, the only negative is adding pathogens disease into your aquarium, but I have rarely encountered this problem.
Cycling is what is known as the nitrogen cycle. Waste (nitrogen) of the fish is first broken down from ammonia (NH3, the most toxic) to nitrites (NO2, less toxic) to nitrates (NO3, least toxic, but high amounts can fish growth and lower resistance to the move of the disease).
At a pH of 6.5, NH3 (ammonia) is converted to NH4 (ammonia), which is basically not toxic to most fish (many of ammonia removing chemicals to a similar ion exchange, and not actually remove ammonia). If you has plants in your aquarium that ammonia directly consumed (especially hornwort), as NO2 (nitrite) no part of the nitrogen cycle. The danger here is whether the pH rises above 6.5 the ammonia can change much more toxic NH3 and aerobic bacteria needed for the consumption of nitrite will be scarce.
To more information about the nitrogen cycle or, see this article: AQUARIUM nitrogen cycle
LIVE PLANTS:
Living plants are desirable in my opinion, but many artificial plants can look very realistic when are prepared or used in connection with live plants. For a beginner live plants are more difficult, but not much.
The benefits of plants are alive are great at removing nitrates and maintain a natural balance to the aquarium, removing CO2 and adding oxygen (only during the day). Hornwort is an excellent plant for nitrate removal (including removal of ammonia), and is relatively easy to grow. Banana plants (if available) are also a very easy plant.
Here is a list of "easy" beginner plants:
Swords Compact, watermark, Red wendtii, Valis spiral subulata Dwarf Hygro, Java Fern regular or lace.
Be careful with fish that will "mow down" their plants, such as: Silver Dollars, most African cichlids, and even goldfish.
For healthy plants that suggest a substrate of sand # 00 mixed with laterite 3-5 cm deep with a layer of gravel # 3 on top of about 2 cm deep. This combination works well for plant roots, ease of vacuuming layer only top (where the roots of plants), and for better bio filtration. You can substitute the laterite with a topsoil of sand (although usually not as good source of iron), by preparing the soil thus meet topsoil sand, add water to the 10 / 1 bleach solution, the combination a couple of minutes, then rinse (with a de-chlorination to rinse first) until the water runs relatively clear. The sand that remains is what is mixed with the roots of plants.
FOOD:
I recommend feeding high quality fish foods and herbal. Quality ingredients include flour spirulina fish, FD Brine Shrimp, shrimp meal, vitamin C and E, lobster shell.
Fish can not digest proteins from beef, well, get most of the fish and their energy needs from fat. Some quality foods include: Omega, Spirulina 20, Ocean Nutrition, Hikari, Sanyu.
Eating fish two to three times a day what they will eat in three minutes.
Foods high in feeding the poor quality protein can increase their levels of nitrate, as an essential ingredient of protein is nitrogen, and if it is unusable by the fish, which is excreted, entering the nitrogen cycle.
CLEANING:
You should try to have a schedule change of 20% (or more) of water each week. I recommend using an empty land, not necessary to remove the fish for use a gravel vacuum. Make sure the water is added again at the same temperature and pH, and has no chlorine and chloramines.
CHEMISTRY:
Keep your level ammonia 0, nitrite 0, your nitrates below 20-30, and your KH above 80 ppm. PH depends largely on the fish that remain. Discus prefer under a pH below 7.0, while Mbuna African cichlids prefer above 8.0
A very general pH of 7.2 -7.5 works for many fish communities. Coral ground and / or Wonder Deposits can help maintain a high pH to the desire of an aquarium with a higher pH, KH, & GH, especially where tap or well water is very acidic (Wonder Shells are much faster in dissolving the desired KH and add crushed coral electrolytes not!).
To lower pH in aquariums where the tap water used is very high (usually 7.8 or higher), I have used mixtures of RO (reverse osmosis) water and tap water. The proportion varies with the pH of tap water, KH, & GH and water conditions I want to achieve. With the disk can be as high as 75% RO. So to maintain these conditions I use peat in the filters. Note that GH does not affect the pH, and magnesium (an important ingredient of GH) is important for the metabolism of fish. Also note that calcium is the main factor in KH (which pH affects!) is also important for the metabolism of fish and fish health and healing. With the above method of using RO (or DI) water in a mixture with tap water and peat, I was still able to maintain a KH above 80 ppm (for proper calcium absorption), sometimes with additives such Wonder Shells calcium or polygluconate.
CONCLUSION:
This is only very general information, there is much more in-depth articles on each of these themes and more available. But these are sound principles to follow, based on 27 + years of experience in the maintenance of the aquarium. As new and better methods available, and update regular information on my to reflect this.
A full article for more about me:
target = "_blank"> Aquarium Information
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Aquarium do filters work in giant plastic containers?
I have a red-eared slider I have no money for a tank so that I wondered if I could put a filter cartridge in the container giant (about 60 liters tank wise), so I can save my money and just buy a filter instead?
works well in any kind of container that can hold enough water for it.
Homemade DIY Aquarium Filter
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