Are External Filters As Scarey As They Look ?

[spidergravy]

If the Nitrate's are in the tap water you may need to put some seachem matrix in your canister filter. Matrix processes much less ammonia or nitrite than other sinctred glass but will home the bactria that eats nitrate. It won't get rid of it all but will be better than nothing. If you don't mine the need to recharge the resins using somthing like a 500g bag of seachem's purigen will rip out all the Nitrogen waste products. [URL="http/www.seachem.com/products/product_pages/Purigen.html"]http/www.seachem.com/products/product_pages/Purigen.html[/URL]

Right, now you're scaring me. All I really want is to be able to clean a filter every so often, do a quick water change when the baby's asleep and I've shut the dog out and otherwise enjoy my fishies. Matrices and recharging resins are WAY beyond my level of understanding and, to be honest, beyond my level of commitment!

 

[waterdrop]

Hi Spider,

I think you are correct that you should be able to eventually get any good aquarium down to where reasonable water changes and periodic filter cleaning will take care of the job.

In the "Hardware" forum we often get off talking about more complicated stuff. Don't worry about it, go for the straight advice over in "New to the Hobby" if need be.

Whatever happened about those ammonia readings you were going to give us? Also, what did you decide about those undergravel filters? Are they still there & do you still have fish in the big 300L tank?

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Bastables]

If the Nitrate's are in the tap water you may need to put some seachem matrix in your canister filter. Matrix processes much less ammonia or nitrite than other sinctred glass but will home the bactria that eats nitrate. It won't get rid of it all but will be better than nothing. If you don't mine the need to recharge the resins using somthing like a 500g bag of seachem's purigen will rip out all the Nitrogen waste products. <a href="http/www.seachem.com/products/product_pages/Purigen.html" target="_blank">http/www.seachem.com/products/product_pages/Purigen.html</a>

Right, now you're scaring me. All I really want is to be able to clean a filter every so often, do a quick water change when the baby's asleep and I've shut the dog out and otherwise enjoy my fishies. Matrices and recharging resins are WAY beyond my level of understanding and, to be honest, beyond my level of commitment!

Seachem's matrix then, It's just sinctred glass much like other sinctred glass "biological" media (media that provide a home for bactaria that process waste). But it's constructed to create anaerobic conditions that the bacteria that eat nitrate need. The trade off is that there is less room or surface area for the bacteria that eat ammonia and nitrite. Just buy one liter of it and see how your nitrate levels go. Or try JBL's sintomec. The advantage of either of these is that they just sit there and work, requiring no recharging or swapping old for new like resin or activated carbon.

 

[spidergravy]

Hello again,

Whatever happened about those ammonia readings you were going to give us? Also, what did you decide about those undergravel filters? Are they still there & do you still have fish in the big 300L tank?

You just want a vicarious update on my life, don't you?!

My ammonia levels are very slightly elevated - about 0.5 - 1 ppm and I know they should be 0. My nitrites are non-existant, which means there are plenty of things breaking nitrites into nitrate, but I don't know how to get rid of the nitrate itself. My pH is 6.8 and that's fairly constant. (Oh and my liquid test kit doesn't do nitrates, only my test strips do that. Weird.)

I've decided to buy the external filter (I like the tetratec one, looks nice and simple) as soon as my husband gets paid (only two and a bit more weeks to go! ) and I'll probably just unplug the pump in the undergravel filter for now, and leave it there. I don't think it'll do much harm and it's quite a lot of disturbance for the poor fishies to go through at the moment.

As for the fish in the 300l tank, I've moved everything I own into it, which is the list I had above. The two original occupants of the tank didn't survive, sadly. I've now taken the small tank apart and its going into storage over Easter. Can't think of anything else to share with you...

 

[waterdrop]

great that the nitrites are 0 and since the ammonia is elevated at least you know there is a purpose to all those water changes. Lack of a good Nitrate test seems unimportant at this point - its just not as harmful. There are debates about it not being harmful all the way up to huge figures like 400ppm or more but on the other hand there is plenty of advice that getting it low is desirable.

It would still be great if one of the mods or somebody very experienced would comment re what effects the old undergravel has. Short of that, though, the more I think about it the more I think it would be better to leave it running for these couple of weeks until you can start the new external going. If you have at least some of the good bacteria in that undergravel (and there is evidence that you've got some of the nitrite-to-nitrate bacteria going) then you would want to keep it alive and that means continuing to give it water flow. I believe it needs it for oxygen (and food of couse.)

I believe that a pH of 6.8 is a bit low for ideal bacteria growing (have read that they like it in the 7's) but changing pH with chemicals or something would be a cure worse than the problem. I wonder if water changes will eventually raise your pH some? Have you run a pH on your tap water?

I've heard nothing but good things about Tetratec externals here on the forum. Just match up your L/h (would be 5x 300L = 1500L/h min for you, right?)

Right, well, just can't resist a checkup on Fishy Will's fish pee levels. (oops, was he the plec that...)

 

[Bastables]

I think the ammonia problem is due to your undergravel system. take a look through this [URL="http/www.bestfish.com/ug.html"]http/www.bestfish.com/ug.html[/URL]

The Irony of under gravel systems is that they need more elbow grease: constant gravel vac's that remove wastes. Problem is a lot of the solid waste is going to end up under the undergravel and will be almost impossible to take out of the tank without breaking the UGF up. With a Tectrac canister all of the really awful rotting stuff is in the canister right next to all the bacteria that process it. After 3 to 6 months you dump all the solid wastes out clean your media in tank water so you minimise the death of beneficial bacteria.

A canister filter will be able to process the ammonia and nitrite to zero but only after the filter media has a large enough bacteria population. Wait one month before unpluging the UGF, and then think seriously about ripping it out. Personally I feel in the long run getting that tetrac up and running is going to be the best thing for your fish and less stress and hard work keeping them happy

 

[spidergravy]

Marvellous, thank you so much! I was certainly going to keep both running for a while, I'm just concerned about takin gout the undergravel filter because of disturbing all the gunk that's accumulated over the years.

Will keep you posted though, thank you all for your help.

 

[spidergravy]

I've heard nothing but good things about Tetratec externals here on the forum. Just match up your L/h (would be 5x 300L = 1500L/h min for you, right?)

Don't know about the calculation, just going by their website - they say that a Tetratec EX 1200 will be fine for up to 500l, so I thought I might trust them... hehe

 

[waterdrop]

I've heard nothing but good things about Tetratec externals here on the forum. Just match up your L/h (would be 5x 300L = 1500L/h min for you, right?)

Don't know about the calculation, just going by their website - they say that a Tetratec EX 1200 will be fine for up to 500l, so I thought I might trust them... hehe

The Tetratec EX 1200 may just be perfect for you. With all the gravel in there, your actual water volume is probably somewhere less than 300L. I think the reason the model is called the "1200" is because the critical design parameter the engineers were going for is 1200L/hour flow rate. When I researched my cannister, many TFF folks advised me to aim toward 5 complete water exchanges per hour, thus multiply 5 times the water volume. That explains my little calc for you. At 1200L/h you will probably be just about optimal - besides, the recommendations vary. For example, sometimes a lesser flow rate is desired if you are heavily planted, like 50% or more coverage of gravel with plants.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Nim]

Er no. If you undergravel filter has been running in an established tank then dont switch it off just now. Get the external filter and run both of them simultaneously for about a month and then turn off the pump on the UG. Wait a week and then go a heavy gravel vac on the gravel to gel most of the mulm out of the gravel and that should smooth things up eventually.

Sorry I also missed the reason why you are getting ammonia readings?

Nim

 

[spidergravy]

Thank you Nim, that's what I was planning to do. Not too sure why my ammonia readings are high though. Haven't got as far as researching that yet. The wind blew my shed door off. Not that that's an excuse or nuffink. hehe