New Fish/Ray tank: sump or canisters?

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Ade

Ade

Piranha
MFK Member
Jun 7, 2008
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London
In a good mood, as I ordered a new tank last week.

Its gonna be 72 x 36 x 24. I will do a straight fish transfer on the day the tank arrives. The current stocks are:

1 Leo 7 inch
1 Tig 11 inch
10 Tiger fish (3-13 inch range)
2 archers 6 inch

Hoping for some advice and /or experiences with keeping simialr size tank and fish. ... should I go for a sump or just use canisters?

I already have 2 FX5's and 1 eheim Pro 3. I was just going to add another large eheim canister and let all 4 filters run the tank, but i am tempted by sump.

What about UV or HMA and polyfilter?

Will likely add another ray in the future.

Thanks in advance.:)
 
Thanks guys.

Is the uv, hma and polyfikter necessary. Some people swear by it . Will the rays suffer if u don't use those things?
 
You will not regret going with a sump.

UV - don't really see any need on a healthy system. Some swear by them, I never use them and never have problems.

HMA - depends on your tap water, do you have high heavy metal levels? Do you have a water softener?

Poly-Filter - Never used this stuff (if you are referring to the chemical filter pad) and once again I think it is subject to your water. In normal cases I would not use it. If your filter system is doing it's job then you should not need this. If you have problems with copper in your water than it may be useful, but I'm not really sure.

By polyfilter, if you are just referring to some sort of mechanical filter, than yes I would definitely recommend using a mechanical filter before your bio-filter. If you use a proper mechanical filter before your bio-filter you should never really have to maintenance it, just change the mechanical filter.

I run a sump on all my tanks and I use a pretty fine mechanical filter before my bio-filter, which I have to change about weekly, but my water is very clear and my bio-filters never need to be messed with.
 
Personally being you already have the FX5's use them, and it wouldn't hurt to run a sump also.. I have a sump and 2 FX5's on my 300.. :)
 
pshtex;5077869; said:
i would do both sump and canisters cause each one does better at different things
Click to expand...

Just wondering, what does a canister do better than a sump?

I can only think of one thing off the top of my head, that being that no problems with evaporation since a canister is sealed. Anything else I am not thinking of?
 
... doesn't nessaserly do anything better, but it adds extra place for bacterias to grow, u get more sirculation, more intakes etc. I think it`s a good idea to combine both sump and canister.
 
I myselfe had 2x180 gallon tanks, bio load total, 9 rays.. Never had a isseu bio vise with 2xfx5 and 1xeheim 2080 in total. So i built myselfe a 500g pond, put the rays in there, with the filtration mentioned above.. I belive that the filtration should be the amount of waste, and not gallon\tank. L\H can be discussed.. I have never had a sump, but i would want one! Im just not there yet. At some point i know i have to go bigger bio vise.
 
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