Your current Fish tank Setups!

How deep should the sand substrate be ideally? as Azza's to me looks quite deep to me imo. :) looks good though!

i've got roman quartz sand in one of mine and try to keep it quite thin except where plants are, (the plants do indeed do quite poorly but also this seems to compact more than sand).

on the subject of sand. rant :D - Not only is it not the best for plants its a ****er to keep clean, poop seems to be heavier than the sand particles rendering the gravel vacuum quite useless and you've got to be quite surgical with the pipe otherwise you just end up with half a bucket of sand and a tank full of buried poop....... im just glad i dont have goldfish!
 
It's quite deep in some parts (5cm) but where I've planted I've shallowed it so the roots are in the soil substrate, probably about 2cm of sand of so. I doubt I'll be moving stuff around much so should be okay hopefully.
 
Guys I'm having a bit of a nightmare and was hoping some of you could please help? Forgive the length but I don't want to miss anything important that might help your diagnosis/advice. If you need a TLDR, my new (and first) external filter is making a noise that seems far too loud, intrusive (a room away intrusive) and vibration-like. See the vid below and comment with any help please. Otherwise, read on.

We have an ~80 litre / 20 gallon tank, approx 2' long x 18" high x 12" deep. We bought it on impulse a couple of years ago and I've learnt as I went - eventually ending up with quite the fish keeping bug! The original Superfish cheap internal filter failed recently, and by the time we'd returned home and noticed the tank was a mess and most of the fish were dead. The pump was making a noise but not actually moving water, so it could have been failed for a few days tbh. All but a few neons died. It was only a crappy £10 foam job, and in hindsight probably not very effective at that.

I emptied the tank, cleaned it up and refilled with the same brand spring water we always use. Our tap water is hellishly alkaline and hard, and buffers like crazy. Great for Malawi cichlids but not so much for soft, acidic blackwater setups like mine. The spring water PH is 6.2, and in the tank ammonia is 0. Nitrite was high after the pump died but is now settling, and nitrate is low. After a bit of reading around I ordered an All Pond Solutions 1000EF external filter, which is rated at 1000 litres throughput for tanks up to 400 litres in size. Yes that's overkill but it's a cheap (£45) smallish external that will allow me to transfer it to a larger (4' hopefully) proper aquarium once funds allow. With some decent layered media the flow rate would be slower anyway, and it turns out in practice I was right. Online sources suggest the real world flow rate is closer to 400 litres not 1000, so again about right really. At the same time I also ordered some DIY foam sheets, BioHome Ultimate sintered glass biomedia (from PondGuru) and so on. It duly arrived, so I set it up like this:

Bottom tray: Coarse 1" corrugated foam > medium 1" corrugated foam > fine 1" corrugated foam > thin polishing pad
Middle tray: A thin polishing pad (last chance of mech filtering before the bio media levels) topped with the ceramic noodles that came with the filter
Top tray: 1KG of BioHome Ultimate

I also seeded each tray with PondGuru's bacteria gel balls, filled the filter canister with more spring water (always treated with de-chlorinator, to be safe) and primed the pump. I left the inlet and outlet tubing at full length (1.2 metres, the max supported by the pump) and the filter is housed on the floor while the tank is above it on a coffee table sized stand. All this was engineered to help keep the flow rate reasonable without turning the tank into a washing machine, and touch wood it worked out fine. On first start, the filter started running fine and just needed a slight wobble to get the rest of the air out. No problems so far. After a while though the motor head / top section of the filter became increasingly loud and buzzy and you can now hear it a whole room away. Imagine leaning a fast vibrating item against a metal or plastic surface - it's that kind of boomy/vibrating noise. Crappy video to help illustrate:


Sorry it's rubbish but I was home alone and struggling to operate the pump and hold the phone etc by myself. As you can see it does sound like the impeller, but it's noticeably worse if you change the angle of the tap stop, and also worse at various degrees of pressing the priming button. If I press hard on the black tube housing, or in the middle of the lid, the noise dulls somewhat. I thought it was an air lock at first but no air seems forthcoming. I did notice however, and I think this is the crux of it but I don't know enough about externals to be sure, that if I tip the unit back enough some water starts to seep out of the seal between the top and bottom halves, around the area of one of the clips and the power lead. :eek:

I though it was coincidence at first (trapped water in external nooks and crannies from putting it together), but I can repeat it time and again. Each time some water leaks out, I can then bleed new air from the filter housing. That sounds like a leak to me. :( Can anyone give me any pointers? Could it just be a dodgy or badly fitting O ring on the lid? It didn't make this noise the first time I set it up. I opened it after a day to make sure the top tray was OK because some of the bio balls were getting out of the outlet pipework. Ever since then, it's been noisy. Maybe the seal has moved? I did re-open and re-seal it but it didn't help, and I didn't think to check the O ring at that time. Worth another go and a proper check? Or is it a faulty unit? A faulty part you can identify? Something else? I have it stood in a bucket for now just in case...

I don't have much spare cash atm but if needs must I could stump up for a better unit and then return this one. Maybe an AquaManta from Maidenhead, or a Fluval 106? Luckily I didn't buy from APS direct (their customer service has mixed reviews) but rather Amazon. Two taps in the app and I get a guaranteed return and refund no questions asked, which is handy. So, any help or suggestions will be very gratefully received. I'm tearing my hair out! TIA.

PS: My plan once it's sorted is to make it a South American setup. Keep the neons, add some pencil fish or red phantom tetras, and either a pair of Cockatoo cichlids (Apistogramma) or maybe a pair of Blue Rams.
 
If you bought it from amazon just return it for a replacement. I would probably remove the impellor and make sure nothings stuck in there first tho just so i didnt look like an idiot but Sounds broken to me
 
The issue will be with the impeller, take it out and make sure it is clean and seated correctly and put it back together. If the problem persists, send it back. Use silicone grease on the big o-ring to make sure it seals and stays sealed for its life. Don't use Vaseline as it will slowly breakdown the rubber/plastic.

Those filters are generic product that is just re branded by a huge number of sellers. Some swear by them others hate them but they are pretty cheap for a reason.

Also contrary to popular belief you do not need lots of expensive media in filters. Mixture of course and fine sponges with some polyester batting is more than enough and very cheap. What they don't tell you is the more porous the material (ie. the finer the holes) the quicker they get clogged with detritus and become useless. Only the amount of bacteria is going to grow that is needed to support your fish load which in reality doesn't need a great deal of surface area for a sensibly stocked tank. Companies that boast they have XX more surface area than another is quite frankly irrelevant. You can support a hell of a lot of fish on a single sponge filter that costs £5 (there just ugly as...).
 
Well that's a pain. Thanks guys. I'll buy an AquaManta EFX 200 today and then generate a return for the APS unit. At least I can just swap the bio media into the new unit so I shouldn't have to restart the cycle.
 
Just a quick update and a thank you, following on from my previous posts about my noisy new external filter.

I visited our LFS this afternoon and picked up an AquaManta EFX 200 external. After a quick rinse I set it up and then transferred the BioHome Ultimate media out of the old filter and into the new filter's top tray, keeping it wet with clean old tank water in the process. I didn't use the phosphate pad or the charcoal though, just coarse/medium/fine wool pads and then two trays of bio media. If nothing else, the tank is blackwater and charcoal will scrub it out all too well.

If anyone is interested or has wondered about them in the past, the AM EFX 200 is slightly smaller than the APS 1000EF it replaces, and is rated for up to 200 litre (versus up to 400 litre) tanks. Real world output is stellar though, and the spray bar is much more uniform than the 1000EF. Importantly, it is also absolutely beautifully silent. Pure bliss after two days of droning vibration in the lounge. It also doesn't leak if you tilt it a bit haha. :o It (the AquaManta) feels much better made, of higher quality and stronger in construction. The media trays are also solid, and everything 'just works'. It was designed by the guy who designs the Tetratec filters apparently.

All that with a four year no quibble warranty via the LFS, all media included (plus a spray bar, which Fluval charge extra for) and for only £85. Win. Thanks again for helping me out guys. Because I'd never had one I wasn't sure if I'd done something wrong or whatever. The new perfect filter says nope, it was just borked. The fish seem happy so I can finally stop stressing. :)
 
Jonny ///M said:
Looks like it was a fail on the mrs part. She hadn't fully cleaned a fake plant from the goldfish tank. Loads of eggs everywhere... we then got rid of two of the massive goldfish that shouldn't have been in the tank that size to a mate who has a pond with similar sized fish.

We took water through to a shop in Glasgow who tested it and OK'd it for adding fish. Bought the proper master test kit so can check it daily and keep an eye on anything getting out of hand.
Click to expand...

Sorry for late input, not checked this thread in a while...

Fish shops are notorious for telling newcomers that their new tank setup is ready to add fish, far too early. A new setup's water is going to resemble the makeup of the source water, so tap water would would be expected to be very low on ammonia and nitrite (less than 0.25mg/l) and nitrate levels should be below 50mg/l out of the tap. Until you add a food source, that is not going to change. Many newcomers than take the store advice as gospel, buy some fish and they start dropping like flies within two or so weeks as the tank water has now turned into a toxic soup.

"Fishless cycling" of a new setup, where you maintain ~2-4mg/l ammonia daily as a food source, typically takes ~6+ weeks. One group of bacteria consume the ammonia and release nitrite, which after a delay of ~2 weeks should see another group of bacteria start to colonise the nitrite and convert it to nitrate.

"Fish-in cycling," which is still the case if your fry are still around, is much harder work for you. Above all else, you must keep the water safe for the fish, which means lots of water changes. As a responsible fishkeeper, this means being prepared to change ~50-95% of the tank water most days, especially in small tanks like a Fluval Edge (as there is less water to dilute the toxic ammonia and highly toxic nitrite). From my own experience, I would perform a a large water change for non-fry if ammonia levels are 0.5mg/l or higher, while a 0.25mg/l nitrite reading would also trigger a water change. The size of the change is dependent upon the toxin readings, diluting the toxin levels with enough fresh dechlorinated water to get the toxin reading down to below ~0.1mg/l (lower the better).

Some approach "fish-in cycling" by being conservative with feeding, as a way of trying to make less work for themselves in the way of water changes, but this is risky with juvenile and adult fish (many store fish are half-starved through the supply chain and can shut down, some can take many days to recognise the man-made fish food we offer, as it is so different to what they eat in the wild) and inadvisable with fry. Fry need frequent (ideally 3+ per day), small feeds to supply their high metabolic rate, so they can grow quickly. A decent ballpark quantity per feed is roughly the size of one eye per fish in the tank. They also benefit from daily water changes of ~10-20%, even if the ammonia/nitrite/nitrate readings are good.
 
Rainmaker, if you say water is coming out of the seal, then it's almost certain air is getting in. This can cause a lot of noise, but that sounds like the impeller is having issues too. Might be the air going in causing the issues, but could also be some junk around the impeller throwing it off balance.

Still, sort the leak first. Clean and lightly lube the seal(s), make sure it is seated correctly and holding water.

Give the impeller a good clean too.

Also, i think you mentioned putting in a lot of media to slow flow. Rebuild the thing with minimum media, you may be stressing the pump too hard and it's causing issues with the impeller.

See if this helps. If you do all of the above and it's not fixed, it's most likley knackered or just poor quality and need replacing.
 
Malt_Vinegar said:
Rainmaker, if you say water is coming out of the seal, then it's almost certain air is getting in. This can cause a lot of noise, but that sounds like the impeller is having issues too. Might be the air going in causing the issues, but could also be some junk around the impeller throwing it off balance.

Still, sort the leak first. Clean and lightly lube the seal(s), make sure it is seated correctly and holding water.

Give the impeller a good clean too.

Also, i think you mentioned putting in a lot of media to slow flow. Rebuild the thing with minimum media, you may be stressing the pump too hard and it's causing issues with the impeller.

See if this helps. If you do all of the above and it's not fixed, it's most likley knackered or just poor quality and need replacing.
Click to expand...

He already replaced it :)
 
UTmaniac said:
Sorry for late input, not checked this thread in a while...

Fish shops are notorious for telling newcomers that their new tank setup is ready to add fish, far too early. A new setup's water is going to resemble the makeup of the source water, so tap water would would be expected to be very low on ammonia and nitrite (less than 0.25mg/l) and nitrate levels should be below 50mg/l out of the tap. Until you add a food source, that is not going to change. Many newcomers than take the store advice as gospel, buy some fish and they start dropping like flies within two or so weeks as the tank water has now turned into a toxic soup.

"Fishless cycling" of a new setup, where you maintain ~2-4mg/l ammonia daily as a food source, typically takes ~6+ weeks. One group of bacteria consume the ammonia and release nitrite, which after a delay of ~2 weeks should see another group of bacteria start to colonise the nitrite and convert it to nitrate.

"Fish-in cycling," which is still the case if your fry are still around, is much harder work for you. Above all else, you must keep the water safe for the fish, which means lots of water changes. As a responsible fishkeeper, this means being prepared to change ~50-95% of the tank water most days, especially in small tanks like a Fluval Edge (as there is less water to dilute the toxic ammonia and highly toxic nitrite). From my own experience, I would perform a a large water change for non-fry if ammonia levels are 0.5mg/l or higher, while a 0.25mg/l nitrite reading would also trigger a water change. The size of the change is dependent upon the toxin readings, diluting the toxin levels with enough fresh dechlorinated water to get the toxin reading down to below ~0.1mg/l (lower the better).

Some approach "fish-in cycling" by being conservative with feeding, as a way of trying to make less work for themselves in the way of water changes, but this is risky with juvenile and adult fish (many store fish are half-starved through the supply chain and can shut down, some can take many days to recognise the man-made fish food we offer, as it is so different to what they eat in the wild) and inadvisable with fry. Fry need frequent (ideally 3+ per day), small feeds to supply their high metabolic rate, so they can grow quickly. A decent ballpark quantity per feed is roughly the size of one eye per fish in the tank. They also benefit from daily water changes of ~10-20%, even if the ammonia/nitrite/nitrate readings are good.
Click to expand...

We worked out why we had the fry. Mrs hadn't cleaned a fake plant from the goldfish tank.

Got them the hell out of it and had started again with the kick start stuff.

We had water checked at a fish shop and subsequently bought a betta, a few life plants and thought all was well. Also purchased the master test kit.

Been testing daily and doing water changes to keep it safe. No nitrites or nitrates and .25ppm ammonia. Nothing has changed in a week so far.

Hate being such a noob with things and just going with what a shop worker said.

Either way this is how its sitting now with his tube to hide in.


 
No plans to add fish until it's cycled.

Today was the first day anything looked different.

Here's how it tested today, far right being tap water checking to see what no ammonia actually looked like.

 
With regards to leaking seals on filters.. Fluval range leak if they're tilted ever so slightly when not pressurised but if they're kept upright it's solid. Not an issue when it's running though. Bizzare filters.

Iv had a death and one fish badly wounded. Unsure what's been fighting but one swordtail (male) has been killed, possibly by the female who has lost her bottom end of tail in the fight. There lyre tails too so long tails gone :( but in other news iv bought a tmc 400 tile for my nano so can't wait to get that working
 
Jonny ///M said:
No plans to add fish until it's cycled.

Today was the first day anything looked different.

Here's how it tested today, far right being tap water checking to see what no ammonia actually looked like.

Click to expand...

And this is why a fish-in cycle is cruel :( That Betta will be suffering with that ammonia in the tank
 
ci_newman said:
And this is why a fish-in cycle is cruel :( That Betta will be suffering with that ammonia in the tank
Click to expand...

I know that now hence the water changes but did ask a shop that has a good reputation after about 10 days.

Does the fact that nitrates exist mean that it's getting there or the fact there is still nitrites and ammonia mean it's ******.?
 
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