Red1313

How far can over filtration compensate before you need to try a different route.

Say you had a 29 gal tank with 3 large fancy goldfish (b/c that's the idea that spawned this question). if you had a canister filter rated for say 60 Gals would that be enough to compensate for the over stocking? Or would a better plan to be use a sump to increase the water volume?

Or are other idea's or factors that I failed to take into account?
What do you guys say?

MissMTS

Plants can compensate for overstocking since excess nitrates act as fertilizer for them. I am not sure about the filters....I would think that a sump would be a better route to increase the water volume. Also, doubling up on your weekly water changes would also help. You can change 25-50 percent every three days instead of once per week

gremlin

Two things to think about - one is controlling the ammonia/waste. This is where the filter and water changes would come in. Test your water daily and adjust your filter/water changes to keep the ammonia at zero. The second thing to think about is the size of the fish. Fancy goldfish get to be up to 12 inches long. Float a ruler in the tank as if it were your grown up fish. Would it have room to swim back and forth or turn around? If the answer is no, then the tank is too small.

Red1313

The size thing was what I was concerned about. :S
It would need to be at least 13" wide? Probably better if wider...
What about if we swapped the hypothetical 29 (30"x12"x18") our for a 30 breeder (36"x18"x12")? That (may) work size (width, length and height) wise. But still leaves the over stock issue (according to a site I found fancy's can be stocked with ten gals apiece but I like the 20 + 10/fish rule better....) So sump then would be best?

P.S. Here's a link to common aquarium dimensions (love it )

MissMTS

A 30 breeder would probably be fine. A 40g breeder would be better if you can find one. The 40's have a really nice footprint. I have to say, I think a lot of people overlook goldies. I did for the longest time, but I absolutely love my three and I don't know how I overlooked them in the past Honestly, if you can only do the 30g though I would do it. You can always upgrade later if you need to. They would be better in a 30g with you than stuck in small display tanks at the LFS.

CoryMac

I'm kinda in this predicament my tank is planted and a bit over stocked, i have 2 power filter 350 penguin bio-wheel & tetra whisper ex45 both combined 590 GPH of filtered water for a 40 gal tank,Saturday i do a 40% water change with heavy vac & on Wednesday i do a 5 gallon water change.

What I like to know how do you go about doing a good gravel vac in a heavily planted tank.

I have not had ammonia & nitrite problems yet, just nitrates going up to 20ppm yesterday i manged to drop it to 10ppm with a heavy gravel vac & a 60% water, my fish look so much happier, but it came with a small price i had to pull out my plant to vac b/c there was so much crud gathering around the plants,I hope my plants survive the shock!!

IIIHawKIII

someone correct me if i'm wrong, but not only are you looking for GPH in your filtering, but if you could increase your surface area...you could grow more bacteria...and make it work for overstock? something i've been contemplating.

and your nitrates could make a HOB plant filter. CWO4GUNNER has one i know. i found an old HOB filter this week in my old fish stuff. so i might use some bog plants and give it a try on my goldy tank when i get it all set up.

just throwin that out there. don't take it as the gospel.

Red1313

For planted tanks one thing you could try is swirling the gravel vac to make water movement to pull the gunk up into the water column... probably not the best solution but it works a bit.

CoryMac

that's what i was thinking, I asked lfs store guy he said thats what he does with his heavy planted tanks as well.

CoryMac

Has anyone tried "Nitra-Zorb" to control nitrates

agabr123

never tried that product specifically, but i know that some members have tried similar products with some...not so great results. one member had it crash his cycle. personally i've never had anything good or bad happen from using those kinds of products, and they end up collecting dust on a shelf

Master Snake

I'm with MissMTS on the plant theory. If you have enough plants in there you may need to even add nitrates for them to process! But I hear goldies don't take kindly to plants so maybe the HOB bogwood like Gunner/CoryMac described. Detoxifying the water is key to an overstocked tank.

ABCDemily

Just keep the water parametres under close scrutiny, and do very regular water changes, I am unfortunately in the same boat as you, thanks to cheeky fish shop owners slipping in the odd tetra!