My Aquarium

[Marty.h]

Here is some pictures of my setup.

It consists of a 6x2x2 display tank and a 4ft x 18" x 17" sump running as a tropical setup has 2 x weirs with durso standpipes and 2 x returns this has always been tropical and never had salt water in it.

My current stock is

16 x lemon tetra
3 x Bala shark
10 x clown loach
3 x dwarf Gourami
3 x angel fish
2 x yoyo loach
2 x panda cory
2 x swarz cory
2 x BN plec
5 x Buenos airies tetra
5 x penguin fish

The tank is planted with sand and bogwood and a rocky area.

Hardware.

Ozone system
Air dryer
Carbon reactor
2 x ehime 3000 return pumps
1 x ehime power head
2 x Fluval E300 heaters
Activated carbon reactor
Puragin reactor
10 kilo of Biohome ultra
Fluval twin chamber air pump
Multi layer particle filtration.
2 x 5ft T8 54w bulbs
Led night light system

Here is a few pictures they don't do it justice.

How it looks now



Some of the pictures below are at different stages.







Hope you like

Cheers
Marty

[Marty.h]

Puragin reactor




Particle filtration



Biohome biological media




Centre chamber bio rings





Cheers
Marty

[Marty.h]

Return pumps


Ozone generator and air dryer




Night lights on





The pictures do not do it justice hope you enjoy

Cheers
Marty

[Cliff]

Nice looking set-up

As you are running a Ozone reactor, how much water do you change each week ?

ALso, are you running bio-pellets in that reactor (first pic in post #3) ?

[Marty.h]

I was running bio pellet they have been removed I now run activated carbon in it. The ozone is not currently running I'm waiting on an Ozone reactor to arrive the out on this will then run into the carbon reactor to strip any excess ozone from the water as long as you make sure any water leaving the ozone reactor is filtered through activated carbon there is no need to up the amount of water changes as you should not have excess ozone flowing freely round the tank.

The water is air aeriated well from 2 large air stones in sump and the 2 returns both agitate the surface water.

At present I do about 100 litre water change a week and have had no issues.

[Cliff]

Thanks

How effective did you find the bio-pellets in a freshwater set-up ? I only have first hand experience using them in marine aquariums and I would be interested to hear your thoughts about using them in a freshwater set-up.

[Marty.h]

I was not impressed to be honest I was forever having to clean the filter in the reactor due to blocking as the pellets broke down and then the flow stopped in reactor.

I have had better success using biohome media it also helps with the nitrite and nitrates. I have been slowly upping the plant life in there to try and ballance the system. I will be adding a CO2 system in the new year at present I just feed them flourish.

[Plecos]

Nice Clean set up! You did a nice job on the hardware stuff. Mark

[Cliff]

Thanks for the info

While I have used bio-pellets with very good success in marine set-ups, I have yet to find someone able to get those same type of results in a fresh water set-up. I tried it on my 90 gallon FW set-up about a year or two ago and never noticed a difference, even after several months

Good plan with the pressurized CO2. That should be a lot more effective than flourish. At least that has been my experience

Thanks for your replies. Please keep up-dating this thread with new pics and all of your planned changes. I will be following along

Cheers

[Marty.h]

Thanks for the comments it does seem that the pellets just do not perform in tropical but because tropical sump setups are not as vast as marine it has been trial and error for me and a bit of a journey but I have enjoyed it all the way and I have learnt a hell of a lot along the way.

I'm now able to offer advice on a tropical sumped setups going of what I have learnt and the mistakes I have made along the way and hopefully any advice I give will save others making.the same mistakes :)