Help Please

Lowerz

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Hi Wonder if anybody can help - We have been given a River Reef 50 tank, with unfortunately no set up instructions. We want to set the tank up to keep African Cihilds not as a marine tank. The confusing part is the filter process and what filers fit in which compartment - also it appears that there is no heater, can anybody confirm that this has to be instaled seperately.

Very grateful for any advise
 
Hi Lowerz and welcome to the forums,

I'm not familiar with that particular tank but hopefully someone who is will come along. It should be relatively easy to determine whether the setup has its own heater and it would likely have a separate electrical cord rather than share one with the filter pump. In most setups where the heater is "captured" inside a chamber of the filtration, it still looks like a normal "testtube" heater but is just sitting hidden inside a chamber of the plastic box (the box can be internal or external to the tank depending on the filter setup.) In a few cases there are filters that include heating as one of the functions and these will have a "coil" somewhere that gets hot to heat the water.

No matter what type of filter, one of the first steps to understanding it is to figure out the direction and path the water takes, starting from "intake" from the tank, progressing through the various chambers of the filter and finally going out the "return" and back to the tank. Some tank "systems" have a filter designed into the lighting hood of the tank. Some (usually larger) tanks have external "sump" filters, which are boxes almost like another aquarium that sit below the tank. The water may be delivered to this box via either an internal or external "overflow" or via a "weir." Weirs (which run the length of a side or the back) and internal overflows usually have holes drilled in the tank, whereas an external overflow has a small box that hangs from the tank edge. This may help you describe your sytem to the members.

~~waterdrop~~
 
Hi,

Don't know if you ever got a reply - can't help with the fish side of things, but set-up is as follows - looking from left to right.

1st bay - heater - should have come with your tank
2nd bay - bottom = filter balls then course foam pad
3rd bay - bottom is bio-media (tubes), then carbon then fine foam pad
4th bay - 2 pumps

Important - when setting up, the biomedia and carbon packs should be removed from polythene bags and washed thoroughly according to my instructions

Final point - my tank was missing a pump - seems there may not be any quality controller in packing?
 

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