Brand New 90 Gal set-up - An Experiment

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
M

mussbu

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Dec 11, 2010
17
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Cleve-Land
Folks, I'm new here but learning alot. I will be setting up a new 90 Gal (48x18x24) freshwater very soon. I've done quite a bit of research about the filtration systems (new to me!). I'm always open to feedback, but this is how I've decided to set it up.

Blackwater South American biotope w/ Angelfish, Tetra's, Cory's, etc. I'm going to experiment w/peat filtering to lower the pH slightly (I don't want to go overboard on this...). My tap is 7.3, and I want to get a stable 6.8 pH.



Two filter systems totaling about 450 GPH, since I've always had success with some overlap/redundency. I am completely satisfied with my old UGF on my other tank and want to use another one on this set-up.:
  • 1) UGF, w/x2 powerheads totalling 200 GPH (maybe less?)
  • 2) Wet/Dry (Berliner) w/ 250 GPH. I think I'm only going to put bio balls in 1 chamber, the other chamber with peat? I like the wet/dry concept because it looks easier to pull out/clean the filters etc than my old Magnum canister - what a pain the #$%!
So, half the filtration will be UGF and the other half wet/dry. Angels like a slower current, so hopefully this will be OK....

Live Plants, mostly in the back and sides. My plan is to put some thin plastic sheets (3 x 3"?) over the UGF (under the plants) to keep the roots out of the filter.....(?). I've read somewhere that wet/dry's add much oxygen and depletes CO2, so maybe only 1 chamber of bio balls and a lower GPH for this will keep the plants happy? Also, some floating plants.

Lighting - I'm miffed, so much has changed. My original intention was to get the old stand-by 48" double florecents, but I see so much available and now I'm not sure what to get.....(some advice?). Blackwater fish like a more subdued light, so I'm thinking 1 tube 'day light', 1 tube 'plant light'? Also, what's a T-5? Do they fit in a standard flor light kit? I need enough light for the plants, yet dim enough for the fish...

Heating, will be different too. I bought a 300w titainium submersible to put in the sump, but I'm dubious it will completely heat the tank above it to 80 degrees. We'll see.......

Cycling the tank will begin when my tank arrives (special order) and put it all together, hopefully before X-mass, and ready for fish in Jan '11. WHEN DO I PUT IN THE LIVE PLANTS? At the beginning or after the tank cycles?


Number of Fish: <50, and probably closer to 40-ish.
  • 15 Cardinals
  • 15 'other' tetras (something that shoals very well!)
  • 6 anglefish
  • 6 cory's
  • 10 hatchet fish (this puts me over my limit....)
  • crayfish (I'm dubious, but boy they are cool to look at! Prob eat my fish...)
This is a dream come true, and am anxiuosly awaiting this I want to thank my wife for allowing me my play time! I'll be in touch, and any feedback would be appreciated!
 
I think you're unnecessarily complicating your filtration in a few areas.
In all honesty plants with a UGF will probably work fine without laying plastic beneath where they'll be planted to restrict their root growth. But it is a potential point of failure.
Unless you have experience with a wet-dry/sump filter, it's going to be several degrees trickier to set up than a canister, and unless the 90g tank is already drilled or has a weir installed, adding a sump to it would be in my opinion way more trouble than it's worth.
I think you could filter the tank simply and effectively with a single canister filter, or two smaller canister filters so you can dedicate one to tinkering with your water parameters with peat etc.

What type of plants were you thinking of having? That will determine the type of lighting you'll need.
If you were thinking of undemanding plants like hygrophyla, vallisneria, Java fern, etc. you may be able to get away with a pair of 48" T8 tubes as long as they have decent reflectors. If you want to grow more demanding plants or just grow undemanding plants more vigorously you'd probably be better off with power compact fluorescents or T5 fluorescents, especially if you're going to dose fertilizers regularly and add CO2.

I wouldn't be worried about the lights being too bright for your fish, they should all cope just fine especially if there are some areas of dense plant cover they can find shade in.
Oh, and 'plant lights' and 'day lights' are generally the same thing, fluoro tubes of 6700 kelvin colour temperature will give you a nice white slightly yellow tinged midday sun light that's perfect for growing plants.

Unless the temperature of the room the tank is to be kept in is say 10 degrees C or 15 degrees F below the desired tank temperature, a 300 watt heater should be sufficient.

When cycling the tank, my understanding is that you should put the plants in first. They can speed up the cycling process or if you have enough plants growing fast enough, skip the cycle all together.

Hope that helps and welcome to MFK.
 
Sounds like it will make a great tank. i would leave out the crayfish because it will it smaller fish.

with filters i would say skip the under gravel or at least set it up reverse under gravel to help stop waste from pilling up in it.
i agree with Burto unless your new tank is set up for a sump or you have experience with one i would stay away but if you do a sump and want some redundancy then run two smaller return pumps. a large canister would handle the tank no problem.

for the plants the light depends on the plants you pick low light or high. i have had no problem growing low light plants under t8s.
Standard T5 lamps offer slightly higher efficacy than T8 lamps and similar output. High-output T5 lamps (T5HO) offer slightly lower efficacy but pack a higher lumen output and a single one can often serve where a pair of T8s would be needed. so you need a different ballast for them
to much water movement release the co2 that you need to grow more demanding plants.

heating i would think a 300w would be enough i'm running my 300 gallon with 2 300w heaters (under power i know) it holds no problem around 80F.

plant your tank right away its a lot easier to do with out water. i have read that the plants love the cycle.

thats just my take on it but i have my own ideas about thing and i'm still trying to learn . what ever you decide it should turn out great 90g is a nice size for a small fish community.
 
I mostly agree with what's been said, but wanted to add that depending on your tap waters kh, peat might not do anything at all to you ph.
Just get a large canister filter like an Fluval FX5 and be done with it.
90 gallon is a great little tank, I have one too!
 
You guys are great - thanks for the feedback! :D A lady I work with had a phenominal tank with lots of plants, just beautiful with a UGF and had great success with NO plastic between the plants and the UGF. When she took it down (had a baby - the tank had to go) she said the roots were entwined in the filter holes. She had it continuously running for 5 yrs though with no problems. She's thinking that if she left it up, there would have been a problem eventually in the near future..... The UGF I have now (18 gal octagon) has been continously running about 2 years, but w/ no plants.

So, the consensus is put the plants in at set-up? Should be easier than afterwards. I don't have my plant list on me, but mostly plants for 'dim' lighting was my intention. I placed an order for a T-8 plant tube, and a 'daylight' T-8 but I forgot what the K's are.....The one is 6500? and the other 10,000?

Now about the wet/dry......the reason why I'm going with it is because they appear to be much more easier to clean and gain access to. When I had a cannister, it was a total pain to clean and change the media. In fact, I had to disconnect it from the piping, wipe water spilled, carry it to the bathroom, pry open the lid - more times than not spilling goo all over my wife's bathroom, then pull out the filters/media and replace, then add more water to it, replace the lid, carry it back to the tank, and finally reconnect it to the piping. :nilly:My enjoyment level went steadily downhill and my cleaning regiment went downhill too! (BTW my 90 gal. will come pre-drilled with the overflow located in the back-center of the tank - I think forgot to mention that).

Crayfish - no, but maybe some shrimp? Doesn't really fit in a South American biotope, but in my world it possibly could.

Thanks all - I'll keep you posted! What a wonderful X-mass present.
 
Personally, if I could afford another type of filtration I wouldn't use a UGF, especially in a serious or semi-serious planted setup. Not that I think it's necessarily going to cause any sort of catastrophic failure in the future, there are just too many better, foolproof options for filtering a tank.

The problem with referring to light tubes as 'plant', 'daylight', 'warm white', 'cool white' etc. is that's a very subjective methodology.
I've seen fluorescent light tubes labeled as 'cool white', which to my mind would indicate closer to the 'cool' blue-green colour spectrum you encounter at 10,000+ kelvin, which were actually 4200 kelvin tubes that gave a very warm orange light.
I purchased a 2' twin T8 fixture for my 2'x20"x14" tank a couple months ago which came with a 'sunlight' and a 'tropical' tube. One of these, I'm guessing it's meant to be the 'sunlight', I would estimate to be about 6700 kelvin, the other, presumably the 'tropical' light, is pink. I don't want a pink light on my tank. :P
I've seen the same aquarium brand pink tubes sold as 'plant' lights. I understand that red and blue spectrum light is effective for terrestrial plant growth, but not especially useful for aquatic plants.
I replaced the pink tube with a $3.50 5000 kelvin tube I found in a supermarket, which noticeable gave off a lot less light than the 'sunlight' tube and was of course warmer, more yellow-orange than yellow-white.
I replaced the 5000k tube with another 'sunlight' tube of the same brand as my fixture since I was pretty impressed with its performance, but this 'sunlight' tube appears to be a different colour temperature again, much, much whiter, looks like 10,000 kelvin. Plants are doing very well though.

I guess the moral of the story is, buy tubes based on their performance and their kelvin colour temperature. Any time we buy things based on what the manufacturer decides to name them we're gambling.

Your canister cleaning procedure sounds about right but how often were you cleaning it? I did pretty much the same with my old AquaOne 1200lph canister, save I took mine to my back step and rinsed my media baskets in two buckets of tank water. Connect it back under the tank, open the hoses for it to fill itself, turn it back on. It certainly wasn't something I looked forward to, not my favourite part of fish keeping, but at worst it was only necessary once every 3 months which is no big deal. Cleaning at 3 month intervals, most of what I washed out of the media was snails.

I had a 55g sump set up under my 170g briefly, media consisted almost entirely of stacked filter matting. I imagine it would have been able to go for quite long intervals between cleaning and this could be improved further with prefilters/filter socks to catch big particles, and it would be easy to add and remove bags of peat or carbon or purigen or whatever for chemical filtration. But bleh, I definitely wouldn't look forward to having to clean it out in its entirety, especially not having to work within the confines of the cabinet. At least with an FX5 I can be a macho man and hoist the whole thing out full of water to clean it outside. :P

Regarding shrimp, I've seen cherries work in very densely planted tanks with discus, but angel fish I don't think would work, they're that much more predatory. I've seen a tiny angel fish try to eat a cherry shrimp that it wouldn't have a hope of fitting in its mouth. My sister had a small group of cherry shrimp that lived hiding under a piece of wood where no fish could get to, but once her angel fish discovered them they disappeared.
Maybe a bigger shrimp like amanos would work with angels, but we can't get amano shrimp in Australia so I have no experience with them.
 
I am in a similar spot right now, just bought a 55gal and I'm trying to figure out the best filtration methods before I set it up. I have a small turtle (only in the tank while he is small) and a pair of large Jack Dempseys. It sounds bad to have a turtle with fish but I tried it on the advice of some other turtle keepers. The Dempseys are big enough and aggressive enough that they all get along fine. That trio does make a dirty tank though. I have a spare tank that I could make into a sump, have a Fluval 304 canister also. Any advice??
 
I had a small turtle in my aquarium many years ago. He would chase - and eventually capture - fish by sitting patiently on the gravel bed and then pounce. I cared more about him than the fish at that time, so I was OK with it. I think it depends on what you want out of your tank. I'd like to have another creature in mine but not at the expense of the fish, so I'm still thinking this through...not sure if I'm ready for 'Wild America'.
 
IMHO I wouldn't go with UGFs because previously stated, there's so much more $ for $ with a nice canister filter, maybe an eheim 2217, excellent filter, best money I ever spent, and same with a wet/dry, they're not so easy using then on paper.. I'd just stick with an eheim canister filter.. Trust me!... Maintenance is super easy and mess free..
 
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