Hi, New To The Forum And Just Bought A Tank

[divingonthereef]

Hi, just thought I would say HELLO. My son Charlie has just bought his first fish tank with my money. We bought a Juwel Trigon 190, a Fluval 4 plus if lter and a 100w heater + some Buddha looking statue that blows bubbles (not my choice trust me). We are finding that we are doing the water changes every week or the water becomes cloudy, we have washed the filters pads and put in carbon media so had a chat to a friend who said join the forum and buy an external filter. So did the first bit and hoping to do the second if it makes sense.

Started looking and found either a Fluval 206 or a 306 and wonder what are the issues by putting in a bigger filter or is it all good. It will filter the water better and make it cleaner. I guess by fitting an external filter I can get rid of the box at the back and hope that the tubes will be less obvious on the new one....... Also, we have just hung the heater over the side which works fine but looks ugly...... I am sure there must be a way of hiding it apart from putting a plant in front of it. I wondered if I put it right at the back near the filter would that be OK?

Anyway, thanks for reading and any help. Apologies for dumb questions

MIKE & CHARLIE

 

[Alm0stAwesome]

Hi There,

Welcome to the forum! A couple of questions here I can answer.

1) You should be doing weekly water changes anyway!
2) Did you cycle your filter before adding fish? If not, the cloudiness could be a bacterial bloom which is normal for a tank that is going through a cycle. The bloom is harmless to fish.
3) Are you rinsing the filters in tank water? If you have been rinsing the filters in tap water then you are killing the bacteria and restarting the cycle every week, which is why the cloudiness keeps happening.
4) Putting a bigger filter in is always a good thing! Externals do a better job than internals generally speaking because you can fit more filter media in them. Regarding which one you should get, I've not got much experience with them so can't say. But I do know that if you get one you need to move your filter media from your internal to the external instead of "starting from new"
5) Your heater is actually not powerful enough for your tank. You need at least a 200w heater for a tank of your size. Most heaters come with a suction bracket to attach them to the side/back of the tank. You can hide it with a plant etc. and you could place it near the filter as well, either way is fine. Just make sure that the heater isn't touching anything, like the plastic of your filter box. If you get an external filter then you could also get an external heater. The one I use is made by Hydor.

If you wouldn't mind answering my couple of questions above, then I could answer more accurately.