Too Much?

[nurglespuss]

Hi All,

Thanks for your advice so far, the heater idea has gone on the back burner for a while.

OK, I ordered a second EHEIM Liberty a while ago, and its finally arrived.

I'm currently running a nano (Aqua Cube 17L 14x12x12) thats being filtered by an Eheim Liberty 2040, Now I thought I'd ordered a second 2040, but accidentally ordered a 2041, which is a fair bit bigger than the 2040!

Anyway, the tank is a 'sort of' river set up (rounded pebbles, sand, java fern) and contains white cloud mountain minnows. I wanted to increase the flow, to keep it well oxygenated (as summer approaches) and gto keep filtration levels high.

Do you think this filter will be like a leaf blower and throw things round the tank?

Cheers.

 

[nurglespuss]

Well... I went ahead with this, and the result? The fish LOVE IT! they were plenty active before, but now they are actually 'shoaling' and exploring all over the tank (rescaped a little too, and added some nano wood). Well impressed Its a snug fit, but Eheim HOBs a re brilliant for their adjustable flow

 

[OldMan47]

Fish that would normally inhabit a fast flowing stream or river will just love flows that would upset most of our fish. I am glad to hear that things are working out for you.
A side note, do not confuse high flows with good filtration. Ideal filtration provides just enough filter flow to deal with the ammonia and nitrite present. Additional flow is sometimes desired by things like plantings and flow interferences like plants acting as obstacles, but does nothing to further reduce the ammonia and nitrites that are already held at zero.
There are a number of threads in this section discussing ways to set up river-like flow patterns. Most of them rely on a separate power head and piping to create the flow from one end to the other in the tank. They do not try to do it with filter flows.

 

[nurglespuss]

Hi there

Thanks for the advice!

Luckily, this tank has been great, despite being small, with regular maintainance its stayed at a constant pH7.4, nitrite/nitrate almost 0, ammonia 0 etc. I even took some water to my lab, and it contains virtually nothing!

Your right about increase flow not = increased filtration, however, the added surface area provided by the sponges should increase biological filtration. I just hope theres enough 'stuff' in the water for the plants to grow (the java fern has bene in there since the tank was set up, after an initial algal bloom, it survived and is growing but very very slowly!

 

[OldMan47]

Java fern is a slow growing plant. If you want to promote lots of growth, a java fern is quite adaptable to fairly high light, although it does not require high light. I have one in a 40 gallon long tank with 64 watts of light and others with much lower light levels. All of them are thriving but the one in the 40 long is huge compared to the others. At about 1.5 WPG, it is in intermediate light while the others are in low light. At one time I also used pressurized CO2 and fertilizers on that tank as an experiment but cannot say that they really helped much. The plant can get all of its nitrogen from fish wastes if you are willing to allow a small build of nitrates in the water. Java fern pulls nutrients from the water, so a bit of nitrate will be treated as fertilizer by java fern. Do not let things get out of control just for the plants though.