Starting up my 1.5m tank again.

Hi everybody, my 1,50m tank has been standing empty for a while after the move and I am planning to fill it again soon. I have a few issues to sort out with the Tetra Tech canister filter that I had running in this tank, but can’t find spare parts at the moment.

• Would a internal filter of 600l/h be sufficient to cycle the tank?
• I want to make the feature fish in the tank Pygmy Rainbows, what stocking density would you suggest.
• Other fish that I want to add are 8 bronze corys, 5 whiptail catfish, 5 banjo catfish and 5 otto catfish. I also have three large ancistrus (two males and one female) but I am not sure if they should go into the tank.
• What other fish would you suggest, I am looking for something really interesting.
• The tank will have loads of drift wood and some rocks.
• Plant will be those that grow quite easy and do not require much attention.

Anything else you guys can think of, feel welcome to give your ideas.

 

Nice big tank dude

as Reedfish said, the filter needs to be bigger!

 

I do have two canister filters that will be added once I have sorted out the problem I have with them. The internal will be the only filter during the cycle period. All the live stock will only go into the tank once the canister filters have been up and running for a week or two. The tank volume will be cycled about 6 times a hour with all the filter runnig. I also have a spare Eheim that I can add, that will push cycles per hour up to about 9.

 

well then your fine with all those filters!

and how many water changes will you do?

 

I will be doing a 10% water change every week, and monitor the nitrate levels. Once the nitrogen cycle has stabilized, I will adjust the water changes accordingly.

 

I will use a small portion of the filter media from the internal to seed the canisters, as well us some filter media from my other system. My plan is not to remove the internal filter once the canister filters are running.

 

Did all the washing and cleaning over the weekend. Filtration is about 1000 l/h.

 

Water is a bit murky at the moment, what might the reason for that be??

 

Could be two reasons... just some dirt in the water or more likely - an explosion of bacteria in the water(is the discolouration sort of "milky" ? ) New tanks often get this bacterial bloom... lots of "stuff" in the water that causes an bacterial explosion - the lucky thing about this is that they finish off the nutrient or element they use to fuel their division with,off relatively quickly - anything from a day to bout day 5 ...

If its the 1st option...clean your mechanical filtration(sponges) a coupla times a day to get rid of fine dust in the water... second option,time and some Seachem Clarity will go a long way towards crystal clear water.... If its a bacterial bloom - would advise against adding fishies yet - the overpopulation of bacteria SERIOUSLY diminish the oxygen supply in the water...