Dual FX6 220 gallon question

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Bassholio

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
May 10, 2018
13
10
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I’m going to try and keep this short and sweet, but I have a few questions. I have had a pair of FX six filters running on 120 gallon tank and then for the last six months a 220 gallon tank. I use a custom spray bar on one that is attached to an E shops 1800 overflow and the second I use the standard fluval input strainer and a custom PVC output with three different nozzles attached to it running the entire length of the tank. The tank is set up in peninsula style where all of the inputs and outputs are all on one side of the tank but I have the outputs plumbed to where they direct water all through the tank and I can watch particles float from one side of the tank and there don’t seem to be any dead spots. The problem that I seem to have is I can’t manage to find away or understand why water polishing is such an issue. I am way over filtering this tank and I constantly feel like I never can get the particulates in the water to come out. I end up cleaning the filters every probably three weeks to replace the Polishing floss due to diminished flow and it just seems like the maintenance schedule is ridiculously short.

My stock is

5 Geo Altofrons, @ 6-8” each
4 electric blue Acara 5-7”
1 leucostica
1 6” Red head topajo
1 blue phantom pleco
2 turquoise severum
2 baby jurupari 3”
1 baby Heckelii 3”
And 5 small Bolivian rams.

My water stays at 10/0/0/7.0-7.4 nitrate/nitrite/ammonia/PH

My avatars are one male and 3 females and there’s never eggs or babies NOT in the tank. My Sevs are a breeding pair and spawn every couple months, a pair of my egos keep spawning but can’t make it to release without swallowing the eggs. So they’re happy, they’re breeding like rabbits.

But.... I just can’t keep the water clear. I change 50% of the water religiously once a week, I have 500 mL of purigenin EACH filter, I use a mix of Matrix and Eheim substrate pro in the top 2 trays and then use a polishing pad, the purigen and matrix carbon in the bottom. I literally can’t understand why I can’t keep the water sparkling crystal clear all the time. It doesn’t matter whether I feed the fish three times a day with pellets or if I feed them once every three days the water always looks the same.

I generally feed them between two and three times a day and they eat a combination of cobalt spirulina flakes, extreme peewee pellets, some bloodworms, live brine shrimp occasionally and chopped earthworms (squeezes and heavily rinsed to get rid of stomach contents). Unless what I think is an acceptable amount of food is grossly over feeding I just simply don’t understand the constant maintenance and the lack of water quality. I have an FX four on I 75 that’s got 20 Geos in it everything else about the tanks are basically the same and I clean that filter once every 3 to 4 months.

Unless what I think is an acceptable amount of food is grossly over feeding I just simply don’t understand the constant maintenance and the lack of water quality. I have an FX four on a 75 that’s got 20 Geos in it everything else about the tanks are basically the same and I clean that filter once every 3 to 4 months.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.
 
On a previous tank I was able to solve this issue by adding a large HOB just for polishing. Seemed like having the intake in the middle of the tank near the surface made it polish the water column better. I actually had to turn it off when feeding or it would suck up a lot of the food.

Makes changing your floss much easier too since it's within easy reach. When I've run canisters, I'd only run 100% bio media in the trays, and they only rarely needed to be opened up.
 
I think adding in something like a sponge filter or HOB filter would help or even just a water polisher (a power head connected to a bottle with the bottom cut off jammed with filter floss)
 
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