Helping friend with a 150 gallon tank - Need some help!

[jdheff1982]

Hey all! My friend at work asked me to help him set up a 150 gal tank. He says that e has all equipment and substrate. He told me that the water soure is from a lake outside the house which gets pumped through a water softener. My question is, what kind of water conditions am I gonna expect? I know the pH will be low. Also, once this tank is setup, he is wanting schooling fish that have lots of color to them. I would like recommendations of type and quantity. I have set up tanks before, just not this big. I won't find out what all he has as in the way of equipment until Monday. I will test the water once I arrive at his place. Any help will be appreciated. Also, I recommended that we do fishless cycling; what would be the quickest method of getting this tank cycled before Christmas?? Thanks a bunch!!

[vfrex]

Can't help you with the water conditions. As far as the cycling goes, its simple. Start the fishless cycle and give your friend a piece of media from your own cycled tank. Also, add a handful of gravel to his tank from yours. If that is not an option, marineland is selling BioSpira. Supposedly this is the real deal, real live bacteria that you can buy.

Schooling fish for a 150. IMO, he doesn't need to do all schooling fish, right? I mean, he could make a really cool setup. For the schoolers, take a look at Rainbows. Most grow to ~4 inches and will school. Check out www.aquabid.com and go to the rainbow section. Most of the sellers have pics. You could do a bunch of those in a 150. To add some diversity, he could do some zebra danios. Then a few slower moving fish maybe...what about a dwarf gourami or a dwarf flame gourami. A betta would go nicely in there. Then maybe a school of rummy nosed tetras.

Is he lookin for size and schooling or just a nice looking tank?

[val]

If I ever got a 150g tank, I've always wanted to try bala sharks, which can get pretty big, and which in my friend's smaller tanks, seem to school pretty well, even if they're not true schooling fish.

Val

[wetmanNY]

If he's starting with fish, he's going to want to switch his water softening brine from "salt"-- sodium chloride-- to potassium chloride. You can get KCl in the watersoftening section of the local Home depot. (Talk to the salesperson there about fish tanks...) He doesn't have to change out his current brine. Just use that salt on the driveway or something and start recharging with potassium chloride.

Why?

KCl exchanges a potassium ion for the calcium and magnesium ions, instead of a sodium ion. The sodium ions just sit there, nasty and reactive. But the potassium ion is in low supply: the plants suck it up and get a chance to use up more phosphates. Phosphates are constantly entering the system (flake feed, etc), so when plant leaves (or duckweed) are removed, so are all those nutrients.

Result: less algae.

Plus, even if he's not planting this tank, I'd recommend some laterite in the gravel (Flourite or Shultz Soil Conditioner). These laterite clays scavenge phosphate from the water.

Result: less algae-- even in an unplanted system.

[fishlips]

Did you say africans? What other FW gets so colorful. If I had a tank that size clown loaches would be in the mix. Do they school? A whole bunch of tetras. What size fish are you after. You are lucky.

[jdheff1982]

Ok,I had a chance Monday morning to see the frends tank and oh my gosh, it is a total wreck. Someone had devised a wierd filtration system involving pvc piping leading to the bottom of the tank to an acrylic tank the bio balls in one spot and input/output water area. My friend is wanting to ditch this setup. For starter, I directed him to the mos expensive Eheim filter system The Pro. II w/ integrated heater and such. With the size of tank he has, will one be alright, or should he get 2???? I have no clue as to what type of fish he gonna get. I can tell one thing tho, his water is definately neutral! Oh, another thing, the whole pipe setup, whoever setup this weird filter system also drilled a silver dollar sized hole for drainage. We were wondering what we could use to plug the hole??? This is turnig into a bigger project than expected!! Please help me with this!!! I haven't done a tank bigger than 37 gallons. Again thanks!!!

[punch]

I don't know what to tell you, but that drilled hole dosn't sound good. You know that "weird" filtration that it came with just might be good, If you could get pictures of it I would think someone here just may be able to figure it out and you may save your self some money. I don't think theres anyway to fix that hole, So the next step would be to use it the way it was set up instead of trying to change it. Just an idea! Hope you get something worked out.

[Panic]

Sounds like the tank is drilled for a sump setup and that the extra acrylic tank you are describing is the sump filter...If this is the case I would be tempted to use the sump and not go spending extra money on a professional eheim...Maybe someone with more expertise can chime in here...
If I had the 150 and wanted to put schooling fish in it I would go with about 15+ congo tetras and then perhaps some other smaller variety of tetra as well...

[O-man21]

Eheim filter work great, get one if u can afford the price

[Bolo Frumblefoot]

Dang it, I wish my 150 had came predrilled with a sump...

Do you know what type of motors are being used in this "weird filter" that you described.
Does the filter look something like this? http://www.bigalsonline.com/product_images/ASWO30000a.gif

This kind of filter is usually called a wet/dry, trickle, or a sump type filter and in my opinion is about as good as you can do for a large sized tank especially. My advice is try to find out the gph it's pumpin (it should be doing imo between 4-5 times you gallonage in an hour) and if that's not enough then you should spring for something else in addition (the eheims are quite expensive but it's an option).

[O-man21]

4-5 times the gallonage is a minimum for all fish, nut if you keep any oscars or chichlids, I reccomend 11-12 times the gallonage

[slipknottin]

GPH has little to do with filtration capacity.

eheims can support much larger loads and have pretty low flow rates compared to most HOB filters.

alot of wet/dry filters, trickle filters, etc. are setup to only flow at 2X the tanks volume per hour or less. They can easily keep up with the load at this flow rate.

large filters like these give bacteria alot of oxygen, nutrients, and plenty of surface area for them to attach to.

Many filters pass water through the media so fast the bacteria does not get a chance to breakdown alot of the ammonia and nitrite on the first pass.

[O-man21]

or you could get a bio-wheel. I use them and it's great

[slipknottin]

I do too. I like them because of two reasons.

1. the mech and bio filtration is seperate. you can toss the entire filter media without touching your bacteria population

2. when the power goes out, the bio media isnt submerged under water so the colony could live longer.

[O-man21]

I meant the seperate bio-wheel system that is powered my a power-head

[slipknottin]

same thing :D

[O-man21]

oh sorry:o

[jdheff1982]

Hey thanks for the reply!!! My friend has a lot of money, so getting what it takes to keep the tank looking good is not a problem. Just curious though, since the eheim run at about 1050L per hour (1 150gal cycle per hour), that would be enough to keep the tank clean??? I would almost want to something to help aid. How about surface skimmers and such????? BTW, what is the best product to raising pH of a tank? The city water runs at about 7.4 to 7.8 and his water runs anywhere between 6.0 and above. His water softener runs at 6.0 and from the outside spigut, it is about 6.5. Again thanks!!!!!

P.S. - The picture of the sump filter is pretty close to wht he has. Only difference is that it is close to 5 or 6 years old and is old in design.

[O-man21]

I think your gonna want to use the sump filter and get an eheim to go with it, just so you can have extra filtration

[O-man21]

and no, just the eheim is not enough to filter the tank

[slipknottin]

Originally posted by O-man21
and no, just the eheim is not enough to filter the tank

what? their are eheims made for tanks up to 300 gallons. you will want other forms of mech filtration, but the eheim could handle the bio-load on its own.

I like wet/drys and sumps more, just because you could put other stuff in the sump, heaters, plants, etc.

[O-man21]

I do think they can handle it, but hte sump will help a lot, and it depends on what fish he wants to add to the tank

[StevieM]

I've got a filtering question that stems from your discussion. I have an eclipse system on my 20 gal High w/ biowheel on it. Does that mean that there isn't much of a population on my mechanical filter media that precedes the biowheel in the water current?? I put a couple extra filter pads in the mechanical filtration area so that they are somewhat exposed to the air as opposed to the cartridge they give you which resided completely submerged. I was just curious as to what the effects of me changing out my mechanical filtration would be, do i need to be worried about "good" bacteria problems?? thanks

steve

[O-man21]

no it doesn't, it means that it is giving an area for bacteria to grow that is exposed to air and water at the same time, thus increasing the health of the bacteria, so they eat more ammonia and nitrate

[slipknottin]

have you ever changed that media before?

if you keep pulling out and replacing media, chances are that most of the bacteria is on your bio-wheel and in your tank (gravel, plants, etc)

If you havent replaced the media for awhile, theres probably quite a bit of bacteria in it. If you can, pull out sections of this at a time to let the bacteria grow elsewhere. After youve done this the first time, you can freely rinse out or replace your media whenever you want without affecting the bacteria population.

HTH

[O-man21]

and I have a Eclipse system 6.

[StevieM]

that's the thing...i was cycling my tank and everything was going nicely and then i changed out my filter media and increased my water change percentage, and did a thorough cleaning of the pump only to find out that my Nitrites which were "peaking" ( some Nitrates and NO ammonia) at that point were re-set to what seemed to be a starting point. It's now been over 2 months since i've started my tank up and I am at the point again where the Ammonia is on the decline and the Nitrites are rising. I've been curious about this ever since...not to mention I had to medicate the tank as well, but that was supposed to not harm bacterial colonies, who knows???? Thanks for any support and ideas you have!!!

steve

[O-man21]

the bacteria take a while to grow on the bio-wheel give it a week or two and see what happens

[blee358]

IMO I would put big schoolers. Some ei could be bala sharks or tinfoil barbs. I would think a school of at least 3 would be good for bala sharks and 4 would be enough for a school of tinfoil barbs. I also heard that Lima Shovelnose like to school and there should be at least 3 in a school. A school of 3 would work really well in a 150. They grow as slow as heck though:(.

[jdheff1982]

How about a reverse osmosis setup?? I don't anything about these except that they are supposed to be the best way to keep the water clean.

I really appreciate everyones help!!! So far, I think I have my friend talked into getting the eheim professional 2329 w/d model, new hoods (2 30"), new gravel (old was bright blue, he's gonna get the wild river variety from Big Al's!!). I told him that since that he filter had a built in heater, he would not need another (correct me if I am wrong). It is really working out well. He buys, I build and setup. He told me that he really liked Angel fish, so maybe we'll setup an environment based from South America. Who knows.... Anywho, chow!

[slipknottin]

Originally posted by silver_shark
How about a reverse osmosis setup?? I don't anything about these except that they are supposed to be the best way to keep the water clean.



there usually used for source water. they are pretty expensive and will do a hundred or so gallons a day. they work in a 3:1 or worse ratio, with 3 gallons of waste water for every 1 gallon of good water. They need high pressure to fuction correctly, 70psi or so.