Emperor 400 filtration help needed ASAP.

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R

Ranlexus

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Aug 2, 2011
10
0
0
Florida
Hello mfk

I currently am running a 120g fish tank with two emperor 400's on each end.
Housed in the aquarium is an ornate bichir ' two peacock bass' longfin Oscar
2 5 inch electric blue jack dempseys ' a tiger shovelnose and one clown loach.
Problem is I'm having is my Oscar is getting hole in the head and has bad fins .

My friend told me to remove my carbon and stop putting the filter pads in it.
He recommended that I buy a black sponge & put bio max in the filters .
Instead of carbon cause carbon can sometimes leak back into the tank.
He showed me his setup and doesn't use carbon at all & fish are looking more then great
Especially his 24inch arowana.

Any ideas how I could set my filters up properly. I took out my filter cartridges and just put blue filter pads in place just to catch dirt until tomorrow .

Any advice would & will be taken into consideration.
I started a treatment of melafix earlier witch I will continue.

Don't just view help me out thanks.
 
With that stock I don't think your filtration is enough. What are the size of the fishes? Water change schedule? Parameters? Check your oscars poop as well, make sure it ain't white and stringy. I'll give you a tip to what I did to my emp400 on my Oscar tank. You take the cartridges and you slit both top and bottom of the blue pad leaving the frame intact. Dump out all the carbon, I then inserted a piece of blue bonded filter pad cut to fit the space. It might be a little tight to insert, you can also try using filter wool in the space though I like the pads better. Cartridge last longer now to because you just need to replace pad that's cut to fit, the cartridge itself needs replacing when it's blue pad starts falling apart and can't hold the pad that is inserted behind it.
 
I cut the back of the blue pads( black side) and dump the carbon. I also fill the cartridges with Biomax.

Do you have 2 filters or 4? If 2 I'd say your a bit underfiltered. I run a pair on a 60 gallon with angels, cories and juvi plecos. You have about 10x the stockload as me based on bio.
 
It doesnt matter what you do to your EMP400's your tank is just unfiltered. i run 2 emp400 on my 72gallon any more volume i'd get a canister. With your stocklist i'd get a fx5 or something along that lines. how often do you do water changes??? HITH is caused by bad water conditions. You have to do water changes more often and get more filteration
 
Not enough filtration? Damn :( the fish aren't big the biggest ones are the electric blues everything else is about two - three inches. My friend wants to sell me his fx5 for 200 just waiting to get the extra cash.
I just threw out the filter cartridges last night cause they were bad already. I just have the blue padding in place now ' I'm going the pet smart to buy there flick biomax now and I'm getting purigen as well.
I did take notice in the oscars poop it's not white its brown and stringy is that bad?
 
If your ammonia is 0, you have enough bio filter capacity...The rest will be up to your water changing regiment. No amount of extra filtering short of plants will relief you of that duty. What is your water change frequency and amount? and what is your nitrate levels?
 
Is it the plants in my aquarium? I should be getting an fx5 this week do you think that would be enough? My nitrate levels I'm not sure of . I have a 120 high 60'24'24 I'm using pool filter sand as my gravel.
& I changed the water friday about 25 gallons and yesterday night I did a water change.
 
Why would you buy a used FX5 for $200 when a new one is $209 on amazon w/ free shipping???
 
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