Just Doubled Up On Filters..

[Ficious]

i have a 36 with a lot of small traffic. i was worried my 30 gal filter wouldnt do the job, so i went out and bought another filter to make it 60 gallons. the new one is pretty cheap, only 25 bucks. it does 130 gallons per hour and the other one does about the same. will this help a lot with ammonia? all their urine and such. i think i have a good biological carpet beneath my rocks. i wanted a 30 gallon bio wheel...but im so impatient and worried about my fish i had to buy this one tonight.

anybody "double up"

 

[ALEXF]

i double up my filters, and yes it helps keep the water cleaner and clearer but you still need to do water changes...

 

[dave1987]

for an overstocked tank it will help a great deal but you will still have to alot of water changes though my filter does my tank 8x and hour

 

[noop]

i have 2 cannister filters on my 160 litre tank. it's way overkill but hey. it increases surface area for beneficial bacteria, and it increases physical filtering of solid wastes. it can only be a good thing. but yes, you still need to do your usual water changes...

 

[drtim]

i have 2 cannister filters on my 160 litre tank. it's way overkill but hey. it increases surface area for beneficial bacteria, and it increases physical filtering of solid wastes. it can only be a good thing. but yes, you still need to do your usual water changes...

Two filters offer one simple advatnage you can clean one without touching the other and therefore have much more stable water chemistry
T.

 

[adamgreen240]

i have 2 cannister filters on my 160 litre tank. it's way overkill but hey. it increases surface area for beneficial bacteria, and it increases physical filtering of solid wastes. it can only be a good thing. but yes, you still need to do your usual water changes...

Two filters offer one simple advatnage you can clean one without touching the other and therefore have much more stable water chemistry
T.

True, i use two filters as my tank is overstocked. With one i used to have floating particles, now with the two filters and a UV, my tank water is crystal clear.

 

[Ficious]

cool, ill just keep up my 33% water change per week...is this not enough?

 

[rabbut]

Depends on stocking and waterstats in the tank and from the tap... Can you post these please?

In most tanks, yes that will be fine, but if overstoking, it may not be enough. Dependign on tap water stats, it could also be too much

Sorry to confuse
Rabbut

 

[waterdrop]

I agree with rabbut, depends on stats. If you have any bad stats in your source water, like ammonia or nitrates, it can change the picture of what size/frequency of water changes you want to do.

In general though, having two is great because of being able to alternate maintenance (as said) and also as a backup to each other, completely separate advantages from the main one of more biomedia capacity.

The wet/dry feature of biowheels is a really clever idea, but the couple of small disadvantages I've read with respect to those are that first, if the power goes out when you are not home, the bacteria on the part of the wheel left up in the air will dry out and die more quickly than in a traditional filter. Secondly, I believe the biowheel design is one of those that tries to package the media in "frames" or some such proprietary structures (correct me if I'm wrong, have never owned one myself) which turn out to give you much less flexibility in media choice and various swapping activities. In contrast, some of the plainer aquaclears are more simple, flexible media boxes and of course cannisters are by far the most flexible of all usually.

~~waterdrop~~