[lastyboy]

Hi all,

Being a relative newbie to P keeping (but not tropical fish!), my thirst for knowledge continues............

I currently have 3 baby rbp's in a 40-50 gall tank, ok for the time being but not for long term.
I have a internal filter, the type which attaches to side of tank with suction pads, is this gonna be suitable for the time being??/

It work fine when i used this tank/filter for my tropical fish i had.

Thanks guys and gals!!, all advice is greatly appreciated.

Cheers

Merv. :biggrin:

 

[lastyboy]

Apologies, if i placed this query in the wrong forum.

Soz

Merv.

 

[Grosse Gurke]

No problem, welcome to the site.

moved to equipment

 

[lastyboy]

Thanks for that.

Merv.

 

[RhomZilla]

Your internal filter sounds good to have.

BTW: WELCOME to the site!!!

 

[RhomZilla]

Your internal filter sounds good to have.

BTW: WELCOME to the site!!!

 

[Grosse Gurke]

I would toss an AC500 or Emp400 on the back. Piranhas are much messier than tropical fish and require greater filtration. I try to get at least 10X turnover on my tanks.

 

[lastyboy]

i wanted to wait untill i got a bigger tank and then i was gonna get a nice, powerful external filter- sounds ok??

 

[Judazzz]

I would not use an internal filter as only in a tank as large as a 40-50 gallon tank! For a community tank, it would be allright, but, like Grosse Gurke stated earlier, since piranha's are messy eaters, there will always be small food remains left to decay inn dark corners, messing up the water. Besides that, because of the type of diet piranha's require, they seem to crap a lot (I haven't noticed that yet, but I doubt it's not true), adding even more to the bioload.
A simple hang-in filter would, in my eyes, not be sufficient to take care of that, even more because they are relatively small, which means there will be very limited space inside the filter for useful/necessary bacteria to colonize.

If I were you, I'd get an additional canister filter (don't need a huge and very expensive one for a 40-50 gallon tank, though), but I'd keep using the internal filter to create surface agitation and some additional mechanical filtration (ie. filtering out debris, like freefloating crap, debris, dead plants, food remains).
Just fill the filter with a little cotton wool, let it run at maximum power, and it'll be a great addition to a canister filter. All you need to do is take out the internal filter once every week to 10 days, clean the cotton wool (replace it every 4th or 5th time) and removable filter parts, and hang it back...

btw: this is a setup I use myself as well: in my 80 gallon tank, I have one 130 gph Eheim canister filter for the hardcore part (biofiltration, and chemical filtration if necessary), and two 100 gph internal filters for the reason described above. Together they do a great job: crystal clear water, no trouble with the water whatsoever, and perfectly healthy fish (as far as I am able to determine).

Hope this helps, and sorry for the lengthy post :smile:

 

[lastyboy]

txs for advice