Wolfgang8810

first im my room my tank stays at 78 F all the time no fluctuations so do i really need a heater? and seccond for my 10 gallon tank i have a standard power filter that came with the kit should i upgrade to a better one?

atmmachine816

If your room temp doesn't fluctuate at all then no, but a heater would still be good to have as a precaution in case something happens that I personally would invest in. What type of filter is it, you probably don't need to change it but your tank is overstocked, do you know that?

Wolfgang8810

yea i know its over stocked im looking into a 55 gallon now. my filter is an aquatech it does 5 - 15 gallons per hour

Luniyn

That filter is fine for th 10 Gal once you get that 55 Gal. Keep an eye on things while the tank is that stocked (i.e. might need to do 20%-25% water changes more frequently) but other then that it should be fine. As for the heater, I'm in the same boat in that my house is always around 78-80F. I only have a heater in my tank for those few days a year that it actually gets cold at night during the winter. Other then that I keep it in the tank but unplugged.

Wolfgang8810

ill most likley get a canaster filter for mt 55 gallon

Isabella

I agree with Atm. As for the filter, it should best pump around 10 x the volume of your tank per 1 hour. And of course, no overstocking

Wolfgang8810

so if i have a 10 gallon tank it needs to pump 10 times that amount of water per hour? 10 gal x 10 = 100 GPH

Isabella

Yes, if you have a 10 gallon tank that means your filter should pump 100 gph (10 gallons x 10 = 100 gallons per hour). When you're buying a filter, it should say on the filter's box how many GPH it has.

Wolfgang8810

mine does 5 - 15 gph now its a power filter is teh 10 times thing for canister filters?

Isabella

Gunnie told me that for canister filters, it's 5 x the volume of your tank. For power filters, it's 10 x the volume of your tank.

If your current filter pumps 5 - 15 gallons per 1 hour, in a 10 gallon tank, that's ... waaaay tooo low! Do you want a canister filter for a 10 gallon tank? I don't know if they make them this small, hehe. If you want to get a power filter for your 10 gallon tank, it should pump 100 gallons per 1 hour.

jsalemi

I've never seen a power filter do only 15gph; even the cheap Top Fin 10 (rebranded Whisper 10) does 80gph. The Penguin 100B does 100gph, and is great for a 10 gallon tank.

Wolfgang8810

no i was talking a canaster filter for mt 55 gallon im getting soon but ill have to look up my filter now i may just be not reading something correctly. its an f cat skill lol

Luniyn

You filter isn't saying that it does 5-15 gph, it's saying that it's good for a 5-15 gal tank. Your filter is rated at 100gph actually according to manufacturer spec's. This is good for your tank especially since it is over crowded at the moment. The minimum turn over rate you want for your fish tank is 4 times the tank size per hour. So if you had a 30 Gal tank, the minimum filtration you would want is 120 gph. The messier the fish you have in the tank (pleco's, oscars, etc. (none of which fit in a 10 Gal tank, I'm just mentioning some examples of messy fish here)) the more filtration you need, or if you have an over stocked tank then you need more as well. The max you would want for your tank is 10 times the size of the tank, the reason I say that is really the max is because you need the water to spend at least a little time running across the filter material (bio-filter, activated carbon if used, etc.) in order for it to do it's job. The mechanical filter will do it's job at almost any level, but the good bacteria don't have enough time to grab some of the ammonia or nitrites in the water if the flow rate is too extreme. Now that doesn't mean I would suggest going out a looking for a filter that only is 4x the size of your tank. In fact I also always recommend using the 10x rule when buying a filter for your tank. Now the main reason the 10x flow rate rule came into being is because the more material you put into your filter, the slower the flow rate. Some manufacturers might say they have a 100 gph flow rate, but that could be with only a mechanical filter pad in there without any carbon or anything. If you add a bio-sponge you could cut the flow rate down by as much as 25%. Put in carbon too and now it might be as low as 50%. So your 100 gph might only be 50 gph at that point, so if you bought a filter that was 10x you fish tank size, chances are you would still be above the 4x minimum. And in your case, you are good to go (better once you get that larger tank ).

Wolfgang8810

yea i know i diddnt know about the 1 inch per gallon rule when i got it so smart me went out and bought fish im regreting it now not because i dont like them but im sorry they have to have cramped conditions like that. unfortunately none of the fish stores or pet shops adopt fish so im scrambling to get money so they have enough room to breathe

Isabella

I respect everyone's opinions and I realize you have the right to maintain your tanks the way you want to, but I still have to disagree with respect to the "4 x the volume of one's tank" rule. For the best of our fish and their health, it's better to have around 10 x the volume, not 4 x the volume. It's always bad to "under-filter", but it's never wrong to "over-filter" a tank. More filtration is better than less filtration. I have a 30 gallon tank that has a filter pumping 300 gallons per 1 hour. I can't imagine a filter pumping less than 300 gph in that tank. Even if you get a filter that pumps 10 x the volume of your tank, in reality it's not 10 x the volume because filter media slow down the water flow. And this is another reason to strive for a higher output of water filtration. Remember, even with the best filtration available, the fish in captivity will never have water quality as good as they'd have it in nature. Yet another reason to try to have your water as clean as possible.

What exactly is the amount of time necessary for the nitrifying bacteria to convert ammonia and nitrite into nitrate? So, according to your statement, a filter that pumps, say, 500 gallons per hour will be ineffective because the water flow is too fast for the bacteria to do their job. A filter pumping 500 gph has a much faster water flow than a filter that pumps for example 100 gph. I don't think the "speed" of the water flow has anything to do with the nitrification process. I apologize if I am wrong, but it just makes no sense to me.

Luniyn

I certainly agree that everyone is entitled to their opinion on how to maintain their tanks. Let me just point out a couple of things to clarify my post above. Of course I was trying to find the articles I've read in the past about this subject online, and as usual I can't find them when I'm looking for them... lol. In any event, let me try to explain what I meant.

As I stated in my post (and you quoted it in your response) that is a minimum turn over rate. I also went on to say that I recommend getting 10x the flow rate for the size of your tank because it won't actually be that much by the time you add filter material, etc.

In nature have you ever seen a river or lake be as clear as it is in our fish tanks? If anything, we provide a higher quality of water in our tanks then in nature (especially with all the waste dumping, pesticide run off, etc. we do these days). It's a misconception that fish live longer in nature then they do in our tanks because of bad water quality. The reason fish live longer in nature is not due to water quality, they can get used to a lot of things even bad water. It's because of the lack of space to really stretch their fins. A fish in nature doesn't live the pampered life we give them, heck any pet for that matter, hence why you can never release a domesticated animal to the wild without a lot of conditioning to get them used to fending for themselves. In nature fish can roam where they please and in order to survive they have to be the strongest and the fastest they can be. In our tanks this isn't so, and that weakened state leads to a shorter life span. But quality of water is hardly worse in our tanks then in nature... well as long as your tank is cycled that is .

I would honestly be surprised if you were actually getting that 300 gph that the spec's state. If you really had an inclination to finding out just how much flow you were actually getting you could do a little test. Get a 1 quart container that has an opening large enough to except all of the water that comes out of the overflow. Also get a stopwatch handy. Next put the container under the flow of the filter and start the stopwatch. When the water level hits the 1 quart mark, stop the stopwatch and dump the container out (not back into your tank if you used a container that had ever been washed with soap before). Now break out the calculator and plug in the time you have on the stopwatch and multiply that by 4 to get the time it would take to fill a 1 Gal container. So let's say that it took 4 seconds to fill your container, 4 x 4 = 16 seconds to fill a Gal container. Next divide 60 into your time for 1 Gal to get your Gal's per minute (i.e. 60/16 = 3.75 Gal per minute). Now multiply your Gal per min amount by 60 and that will give you your Gal per hour flow rate (i.e. 3.75 x 60 = 225 gph). It's not a necessary experiment, but if you were interested in what kind of flow you were actually getting considering the filter material you were using and normal amount of dirt build up (i.e. don't cheat and clean your filter before doing this test ) this would work well enough.

That would depend on the volume of water you were talking about though. If you had that 500gph filter on a 10 Gal tank, yes I would say that was way too much filtration as you would be turning over the entire tank more then 50 times per hour (more because you don't actually have 10 Gal of water in the tank due to displacement from substrate, decorations, etc.). On a 50 Gal tank it would of course be just right as it would be 10 times per hour that the tank would turn over. In other words 500gph = 8.333 gal per minute, so in the 10 Gal tank you would be turning it over almost every minute, whereas in the 50 Gal tank it would be only 1/5th of that being turned over every minute. In essence the water is spending more time across the filter in the larger tank then in the smaller tank even though they are both using a 500gph rated filter. That and could you imagine the whirlpool a 500gph filter would make on a 10 Gal tank, it would probably be like pouring a bucket of water into the tank to fill it, the substrate and plants would be shoved all over the place. Obviously this would be an extreme and would you be all that bad off if you had a filter that turned over the tank 12x per hour rather then 10x, probably not, but the extra money spent on the overkill filter could have been spent elsewhere.

Again, to each his/her own, but this is just my opinion from what I've experienced and read in many articles (none of which Murphy's Law will allow me to find when I actually have a need to quote them :).

Butterfly

wolfgang8810 I responded in your post about filter media that I had done some research and your filter has a gph of 20 so thats only 2x and that certainly isn't enough. Sorry
a gph of 10x the gallons is ideal. The beneficial bacteria in the filter media need an adequate oxygen supply to survive. The better the water flow the more oxygen is available for that bacteria to do it's job.
Our aquariums are basically boxes of water and the artificial means(filters) we use to keep that water suitable for our fish is just that artificial so we have to be more careful about how much filtration and water movement we provide. In nature the water may not be as clear as our aquariums but usually there is running water carrying waste away and constantly refreshing the water supply and providing beneficial bacteria on rocks, plants and the substrate with oxygen. Native plants also help with the filtration process by using waste and providing oxygen. so as you see there really isn't any way to compare the two.
So what we have to do is to provide our fish with the best we can provide.
Carol

chickadee

I will only say that because fish CAN live in a certain way in nature does not mean that this is the best way or the healthiest way for them to live in aquaria. Nature is an entirely different situation. It is not an enclosed box that has stresses and pressures placed on them that they are not exposed to in nature. We control the environment and make it into what we wish in aquaria, in nature they are not controlled by our whims. There are bacteria that attack them due to the way they are handled even before we receive them at times and there are occasionally combinations of fish in tanks that while they are compatible are not natural. There are also stubborn aquarists who are determined to bend "Mother Nature's Plan" and totally test the limits with their tanks inhabitants, and the "minimum requirements" are simply not going to be acceptable in these circumstances. We all have fish die for no apparent reasons at times, and it is my firm and very solid opinion that the expense and love of the fish we care for really should require that we do the BEST we can for them rather than just what they can get by with.

I make no apologies for the feelings I stated. These fish are in our care and are basically helpless if we do not choose to care for them. They cannot swim away and go defend themselves. They cannot go find cleaner water. They cannot get food. They cannot find others of their own kind. They cannot get away from their enemies. They are not out in Nature where they may have that chance to do for themselves, so we HAVE to do for them and if we do not want to provide them with a good home why are we doing this? If you have a child who is not capable of caring for itself, do you only do what is minimal? I believe that the poor treatment of these of God's creatures is as much abuse as abusing a child. Harsh?..Maybe, but how do you argue that they do not deserve to be barely cared for?

Rose