Filtration set up

[Ashfro]

What aquariums do you currently have? What filtration are you currently using? How much experience do you have setting up and maintaining aquariums? What is the purpose of all the new tanks? Are you interested in getting into breeding a particular species?

I am not trying to discourage you just trying to get a handle on where you are coming from and what you are trying to accomplish? Keeping fish is a ton of fun... but it is a lot more fun if you can avoid big die offs!

What ever you are trying to accomplish I would recommend building slowly! If you currently have one tank by all means add a second tank and cycle it properly. Using existing media will reduce the amount of time it takes to cycle the second tank but it will not eliminate the need for the cycling process. Or you can just rush or ignore the whole cycling process like many do... but that will most likely kill some fish along the way.

A central sump is doable but it does come with the risk of spreading disease between your tanks. A properly sized UV filter or DE filter will greatly reduce the chance of spreading disease. If all your tanks are going to be filled with offspring from our breeding stock there is much less chance of introducing a disease than if you are adding fish from outside sources.

There is no best filter for everyone. The best filter is the filter that works best for you. Hang on back filters are nice because they are usually very easy to maintain which means they usually get maintained more often.

I have frontosas species and am getting 40 more fishes of different frontosa species which I like I have a existing filter from my frontosa tank and I like to breed this species in particular because I like it.i have a year of experience

 

[Oughtsix]

I had a Frontosa quite a while ago, he was one of my favorite fish ever. Sounds like you will have quite a cool setup.

A major benefit of a central sump is you will have one filter to clean and maintain instead of a dozen canisters. That has got to make things easier. I think an efficient easy to clean sump design will make a huge difference in your success! I would try to design a large sump in which I could change a majority of the entire systems water at the one central sump instead of a half dozen different tanks. Likewise a single mechanical media will be a lot quicker to maintain than a half dozen, one for each tank. I like your idea of sponge filters as a backup.

I think your fish room layout is going to dictate a lot of the design choices on your central sump. Off the bat you can choose a single large return pump with a manifold and balancing valves to distribute return water... or you could opt for a return pump for every tank. If it were me I would seriously consider a single big return pump pushing water through a fair sized pool DE filter then probably the manifold with balancing valves... but this is just because I have a "thing" for DE filters. One return pump per tank would probably be easier to engineer, maintain and be considerably less troublesome in the long run.

With a year of experience you mioght/minght not have discovered that there is no short cut to cycling tanks. It take a while for all the different bacterial colonies to build up on all the water exposed surfaces on a tank. I could see how a central sump might reduce cycling times... but I have no experience with a central sump myself.

My biggest recommendation would be to build your system slowly, one tank at a time. It is much easier to attend to a single tank that has gone awry than it is to attend to several tanks that are all cycling at the same time and all decide to take a dump at the same time. When you setup your second tank I think you will find you have doubled the complexity of your system and doubled the time it takes to maintain them. It is going to take a while to figure out how to plan the maintenance on two tanks to minimize the maintenance time... and to figure out what works and what doesn't work when you have multiple tanks.

 

[Ashfro]

I had a Frontosa quite a while ago, he was one of my favorite fish ever. Sounds like you will have quite a cool setup.

A major benefit of a central sump is you will have one filter to clean and maintain instead of a dozen canisters. That has got to make things easier. I think an efficient easy to clean sump design will make a huge difference in your success! I would try to design a large sump in which I could change a majority of the entire systems water at the one central sump instead of a half dozen different tanks. Likewise a single mechanical media will be a lot quicker to maintain than a half dozen, one for each tank. I like your idea of sponge filters as a backup.

I think your fish room layout is going to dictate a lot of the design choices on your central sump. Off the bat you can choose a single large return pump with a manifold and balancing valves to distribute return water... or you could opt for a return pump for every tank. If it were me I would seriously consider a single big return pump pushing water through a fair sized pool DE filter then probably the manifold with balancing valves... but this is just because I have a "thing" for DE filters. One return pump per tank would probably be easier to engineer, maintain and considerably less troublesome in the long run.

But people are telling the diseases may spread from tank to tank if u have central sump

 

[Oughtsix]

But people are telling the diseases may spread from tank to tank if u have central sump

That is definitely something you will have to plan for and contend with. A large UV sterilizer would be one approach, a DE filter would be another approach.