Jewel Rekord 96 Or 800?

[AdAndrews]

I am looking into buying a new tropical aquarium, i have seem the rekord 96 and the 800 does anyone have an opinon on which one is better is it worth paying more for a more recent tank or try to haggle my nearest fish shop price down on the 96

plus how much does filter sponges cost per month i dont want to be spending lots on maintinance

 

[VictorMeldrew]

I can not comment on the 800 as i have never had one but i did own a 96. I had it for about 8 years and it is still going strong with its new owner, so imo the tank is sound enough. To maintain the filter its not that expensive, i did not follow the manufacters guidlines to much, they say replace the white pads weekly if i remember rightly, i changed mine every 3 weeks or so and all seemed fine allthough i surppose if differs on how much dirt you set-up generates. Its about 2 or 3 quid for a box of five, same again with the bigger carbon pads, i replaced then much longer than they stated and it worked ok, they were also about £3 for one. As far as the heater is concerned it was perfect and is still working today The lighting is proberly the weak point, its not that good to be honest, but overall i thought the 96 was pretty good.

 

[rabbut]

They wrecked the filter and lighting in the new tank IMO, so I'd get the old school 98. A proven tank that did me proud for 5 years before being sold on to it's new owner 9 months ago....

I have never ran the 800, but I do work in an aquatics shop and thus have seen the system in the flesh. The lights feel cheap and the new hood has been made more complicated than it needs to be. The "feeding flap" is a real gimmic and the bit of hinged plastic the light is on flexes and bends when lifted. I wouldn't run the lights with anything on top of them for fear of it falling in....

The filter has had all the surface area reduced, making it higher maintanance on paper....

If you follow the manufactures guidelines, it will cost about £7 a month in filter pads for both. With a few "tweaks" you can get it down to like 5p.... Remove the carbon pad; it isn't needed. Get a new blue sponge in there. Same with the green ones.... After that, buy a bulk pack of pond floss and cut it into replacement pads. A bag will cost like £5 and will make like 1-200 pads....

The 98 has none of the problems of the 800 IMO and is a good solid tank. Lighing could be better, but heck it could be also on the 800....

HTH
Rabbut

 

[charlton]

i hope you got my pm alright, something i forgot to mention was the lighting, as has been already mentioned the lightin isn't great but it depends wheather you were hoping to have real plants or not as to whether its good enough or not. I personally added another light in the hood which was easy to do and tried with real plants, although it looked nice i found it was alot harder to maintain so decided to go for fake plants after all !!