Is this much surface agitation ok?

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Sunny247

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Apr 9, 2020
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UK
I’ve set my new (first) tank up and it’s just finished cycling! I just want to make sure everything is ok before I put some fish in. I’ve read that I need a sufficient amount of surface agitation. Is this much ok?

Hope you can see the links..


 
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Looks like good movement.

Thank you, as you can probably see I’ve just got one of the outlet thingies faced towards the surface of the water. You think that should be fine? No need for an air stone or anything?
 
Thank you, as you can probably see I’ve just got one of the outlet thingies faced towards the surface of the water. You think that should be fine? No need for an air stone or anything?
Think it’ll be fine w/o an air stone.
 
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If your tank is understocked and clean it's probably fine.

I have dissolved oxygen meters and it takes a lot of surface agitation to match a single air stone. The top of my tank was basically whitewater.
 
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Looks pretty good. I normally run my tanks on filter current only, but whether that's enough depends partly on how many and what kind of fish (or factors like water temperature, how much surface area to volume, etc.).

It’s a 85 gallon tank, I don’t want to heavily stock it. It will have 6 geophagus Tapajos red heads + 12-15 rosy tetras for dither. I think I’ll be running it at 26-27 degrees (around 80 Fahrenheit)
 
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When I had the red heads I did 50-80% weekly. That said, imo water changes depend on a variety of factors, like filtration, quality of your tap water, species of fish, what and how much you feed, etc. So I don't consider anything to be a rule.

In recent years I typically stock and feed lightly to moderately and do large but no more than weekly water changes. Certain of my tanks go longer than a week, like my breeding trio kapampa gibberosa, lightly fed in a 135 gal tank with no other fish. Color in these fish quickly responds to water quality, so you know when they're happy.
 
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