What filter do I need...

I have bought a fish tank off of craigslist its a 125 gal. with about 150 pounds of live rock. It has one Clown fish and one Sand Siffter. It has 2 Emporer 400s that hang on the back of the tank and thats all the filters i have at the monent I have bought a Protein Skimmer off a member here but it won't be in for awhile. I was looking at this filter on ebay NEW! HAGEN FLUVAL G6 G 6 CANISTER FILTER FOR AQUARIUMS - eBay (item 260702128386 end time Dec-05-10 11:35:46 PST) but, wanted to see what you guys think before paying that much for a filter. I will have some more fish and corals in the years to come but for now I just want to be able to keep more fish. The filters I have now keep the water very very clear. I have no ammonia or nitrite and about 5ppm on nirate. Just want to be able to keep more fish for now but plan to do corals in the summer. Any advise would be great! Thanks!;D

 

Ehh, I'd go with an FX5. 600 gph, and tons of room for extra filter media. The G6 seems so fragile. The FX looks like a monster and is pretty quiet. $500 normally, but I think there's one on eBay for $180 or so. And brand new ones on Amazon for $230 or so. Great filter. even better if you can get two. Temporarily, a skimmer and power heads should work great.

 

jtr38230

my honest advice would be, you dont need one
with 125 gallons of water and 150 lb of rock
what you do need is flow - so aside from the 2 penguins, what else do you have moving water about in that tank?

the rock, that amount of rock, should be perfectly adequate to provide the basis for your biological filtration, provided you have enough water movement through the tank, in order to continually bring nutrient ladden water to the rock

if it where my tank
I would ensure I had a couple of decent power heads or wavemakers, 1 at each end
at least 1 pointed upwards to ensure the surface of the water is rippled
I would aim for a total of about 30 x water volume between these 2 power heads
so a total of 3750 gph divided by 2 = 1875
so 2 power heads rated at 1875 or thereabouts at either end of you set up
would be a better investment than a cannister filter IME
that would also be a great start for when you are adding corals as many soft corals, LPS etc will be very happy in that kind of flow rate

if you did eventually want to move on to hard SPS type corals, you may well then have to add additional sources of water movement, but as a starting position 30 x tank volume is good IME.

The penguins could eventually be used to run Carbon, GFO, Purigen, Chemi pure etc
( chemical media rather than biological as the rock, the sand, the tank walls and everything else in the water, is where your bacteria will live and maintain water quality)

But be aware, you should not remove your existing filter material from those penguins all at once. you need to give the bacteria in the tank time to increase , by removing some of the filter media over a period of about 4 weeks

Just my opinion

Steve

 

I have 2 Hydor Magnums that are rated at 1650 gph.

 

I'd say get some time of filter to remove waste. A skimmer may remove waste in the water, but nothing like leftover food or anything that fish excrete. I'd recommend an AquaClear 110 or two. They're $80 if you buy it at Petsmart. Sometimes they have sales.

 

Yeah I love AquaClears I have one on my FW tank. Problem is I already have 2 hang on filters. that have been on the tank for along time. I don't want to replace them. They have the bio wheels. A friend of mine told me to never get rid of them.

 

I've never noticed a different with a biowheel. The only tank I've ever had with one was my very first saltwater tank, which was only 5 gallons. And if you have live rock, you shouldn't need the biowheel at all. Or, if you want, you could get a smaller aquaclear and use it with your other filters. you can never have too much filtration.

 

I have recieved a couple of PMs about this post
so for the benefit of others who might read this and be considering the type of filtration required for a reef tank

the basis of filtration is provided by bacteria

bacteria will colonise all and every surface area in a reef tank

one important thing to recognise with bacteria is that you can only have as much of it as there are nutrients to support it

it exists in a hopefully perfect ratio to the amount of live stock you maintain

Doc Fragenstein who sadly no longer posts on this site gave a perfect analogy IMO

Its foxes and rabbits
if you have 100 foxes, you need 100 rabbits or some of the foxes go hungry and starve to death
in our situation the foxes are bacteria and the rabbits are nutrients
you can only maintain enough bacteria as there are nutrients to feed them

in a tank with adequate rockwork , and enough flow, there is adequate real estate for bacteria to colonise

if you add a cannister filter to the equation - what happens is some bacteria will live in the media in the cannister, and thus less lives on the rock work
what you end up with is - not additional biological filtration, but with biological filtration spread between 2 areas of real estate

a cannister filter on a tank with no sump, can provide a convienient collection point for debris and as long as it is cleaned regular, does not have to be the nitrate factory that some people might label it as
(but many people with sumpless tanks and no cannister filter, achieve this with well tuned flow and periodic syphoning, water changes etc)

a cannister filter on a FO or FOWLR tank where the live rock is minimal in order to give the fish more swimming room, would be a good method of providing the required real estate for bacteria to colonise

on a tank with no sump and no reactors (external container for housing chemical media) then a cannister can provide a location for chemical media such as Carbon, Purigen, GFO - but some of these media are designed to be tumbled to be effective (they need to move about in order to expose more area to the water) and as such GFO for example is not great when used in a mesh bag in a cannister - it does work, but its more effective tumbled in a reactor

hope that clarifies my meaning from 1st post a little better

Steve