How can your nitrate readings be 0? Gotta be SOME nitrates in there. Anyway, I'd definitely throw a canister on that tank...can't go wrong with an eheim 2217 in my opinion, but there are other good options as well.
I would go with a Fluval FX5. You can find them for around $240 new online with free shipping. Heck you could get 2 Fluval FX5s for the price of a G6 and still have $50 left over for media.
FX5 rated up to 400G an hour....
F G6 rated up to 160G an hour....
Get the picture.
It was a breeze to set up my FX5 and to clean it. There is great instructions and holds a TON of media for customization.
I have two 55g tanks both cycled for a long time. The cichlid tank is always clean but the community is alittle cloudy. most would say it is spotless but i know its not because of the water in my other tank. I then bought live plants for the comm tank and it was spotless. I just got sick of the plants getting in all the filter media so i pulled them. I also have a pleco i think he is the problem
Cloudy water can simpley be caused by adding cool water to heated water. What would be seen is oxidized gas.
And an FYI - 2-3 weeks to cycle a new tank is inaccurate information. 4-6 weeks is more like it. High ammonia week 1, high nitrite weeks 2-3, low nitrite high nitrate week 4 and every time you add fish there will be spikez til about the 6 month mark when the bacteria and micro/macro algaes within the tank have matured. Massive water changes thru this process greatly help the fishs health but bio colonies take time to reproduce and grow.
I like my FX5 too, but a word of caution - the "media volume" specified in the specs apparently includes all the room taken up by the sponges. It's not the actual volume that you can stuff your own bio-media with. I bought 4 buckets of Seachem Matrix (4L each) according to the specs and filled up the FX5 (all three baskets) with just one bucket. Now I'm stuck with three buckets of Matrix
