When sizing your new filter to tank...

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Sciroccoman

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Apr 6, 2008
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Florida
Is it safe to say, for most fresh water situations, that when buying a filter system for your tank you should go 150-200% filter rate to volume of tank?... I have two 30 gallon tanks that are filtered by 55 gallon filters a piece, good? say 10g tank...20g filter? 55g tank a pair of 40 gal HOB? I dunno, I'm just a noob that couldn't make sense of all the techno-jargin in the fore appionted stickies!! :popcorn:
 
no matter what tank size i get, the filter is 5x more then the tank. But it also depends on the stock of fish.
 
5x, eh? You're right on the part where it depends on the fish being kept. I keep cichlids, and I have two 30 gal. tanks. One is long and one is tall. I keep getting different volume calculations between the two different types. I already have the long tank set up and flowing, for more than 3 months. It has a two 30 gal HOB style filters, seems great as long as I feed it water (about 5 gal evaporation loss per week and two days) ends up a perfect water change cycle...take 5 out and put ten in.
Now the 30g tall I have a 55g HOB set up where the input tube is near bottom quarter of the tank, sucking up the tank waste... in two days from setting it up with 50% filter matter and 50% water from the 30g long, it tests ready for some guppies to get the ammonia spike to happen.... I think this seems normal...I hope! ;)
 
Alot of it depends on the type of filter(canister, or HOB) for me. If Im running a canister...I like to have however many units will give me 8-10X tank volume per hour...and if Im using a HOB I generally try to get atleast 12X tank volume per hour. This is based on the fact that filters never pump as much as they claim...and with HOBs...you have alot less media than a comparable GPH rated canister. This would be the diffrence for example in a Rena XP3 canister-vs-Penguin 350 HOB.

I personally wouldnt trust the Penguin 350 to more than 30G of water despite the fact its rated for something like up to a 60G tank...where I would trust the Rena XP3 to handle a 55G tank quite well, granted they have that thing rated for a 175G tank lol

To many variables to consider to really determine the right size filter for your tank. As long as your tanks are clear, clean and have healthy fish and water parms...id say the filter is adequate enough for your tank :)
 
andro23;2558635; said:
Alot of it depends on the type of filter(canister, or HOB) for me. If Im running a canister...I like to have however many units will give me 8-10X tank volume per hour...and if Im using a HOB I generally try to get atleast 12X tank volume per hour. This is based on the fact that filters never pump as much as they claim...and with HOBs...you have alot less media than a comparable GPH rated canister. This would be the diffrence for example in a Rena XP3 canister-vs-Penguin 350 HOB.

I personally wouldnt trust the Penguin 350 to more than 30G of water despite the fact its rated for something like up to a 60G tank...where I would trust the Rena XP3 to handle a 55G tank quite well, granted they have that thing rated for a 175G tank lol

To many variables to consider to really determine the right size filter for your tank. As long as your tanks are clear, clean and have healthy fish and water parms...id say the filter is adequate enough for your tank :)
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Preach it baby!
 
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