Hi,
I've been lurking for a while, so here goes with my first post.
I've just bought my son a tank "kit" (100L about 22 gallons) with all the accessories supposedly in it. The filter media though is a single piece of sponge about 4 inches square by about 2 inches thick (medium to coarse sort of texture). There's about 3 x this volume still unused in the filter box stuck on the side of the tank (internally). He wants a tropical freshwater community tank with plants, so my question is, what other filter media should we use for this tank? My guess is a coarse filter, fine filter and maybe some ceramic or similar as a bacterial substrate, does this sound ok?
Also, does anyone have any information about exactly what kind of sponge/foam to use? Most the vastly overpriced stuff in the aquarium store looks like things I could get from a dressmaking shop, or I could cut down large sheets of foam intended for koi carp pond filters. It all looks the same sort of stuff to me.
Currently, there's no fish in the tank, but the filter is running to clear the murky water caused by the gravel we added, the foam block was too coarse, so we've sucessfully used an old sports sock! - I'm not suggesting that I'd use this when the fish are introduced, but I reckon that there's plenty of cheap media that could be used of various sorts of inert polymer wadding rather than the "rip off the uninformed" approach of many of the aquarist manufacturers.
20 years ago I was a post-grad marine biologist and I made effective external trickle filters using all sorts of spun polymer and wool-like materials. I've not had a tank since then, so would like some advice as to avoid trial and error myself at least at first!
Paul
I've been lurking for a while, so here goes with my first post.
I've just bought my son a tank "kit" (100L about 22 gallons) with all the accessories supposedly in it. The filter media though is a single piece of sponge about 4 inches square by about 2 inches thick (medium to coarse sort of texture). There's about 3 x this volume still unused in the filter box stuck on the side of the tank (internally). He wants a tropical freshwater community tank with plants, so my question is, what other filter media should we use for this tank? My guess is a coarse filter, fine filter and maybe some ceramic or similar as a bacterial substrate, does this sound ok?
Also, does anyone have any information about exactly what kind of sponge/foam to use? Most the vastly overpriced stuff in the aquarium store looks like things I could get from a dressmaking shop, or I could cut down large sheets of foam intended for koi carp pond filters. It all looks the same sort of stuff to me.
Currently, there's no fish in the tank, but the filter is running to clear the murky water caused by the gravel we added, the foam block was too coarse, so we've sucessfully used an old sports sock! - I'm not suggesting that I'd use this when the fish are introduced, but I reckon that there's plenty of cheap media that could be used of various sorts of inert polymer wadding rather than the "rip off the uninformed" approach of many of the aquarist manufacturers.
20 years ago I was a post-grad marine biologist and I made effective external trickle filters using all sorts of spun polymer and wool-like materials. I've not had a tank since then, so would like some advice as to avoid trial and error myself at least at first!
Paul
