Substrate And Equipment For A 200 L

[sofakingwright]

Hi,

I have a 200 L (44 gallon) Fluval tank. The filter is a great external canister. I have had goldfish for a couple of years, but I am now wishing to switch to tropical. My tank currently has black gravel substrate, which I vacuum. I have a bubble wall aeration system, and many plants - mostly java ferns, moss, and anubias which is all doing well.

My main questions are:

Will one heater be enough? I have a long Fluval heater already which I am not using.

Is switching to sand a requisite for a tropical tank? I would like to switch to sand, but because I have many already established plants I would hate to disturb them.

What kind of powerhead would you recommend? I have been having a hard time keeping BGA out, although not due to lack of water changing and cleaning. It seems to have appeared in the past two months, the time period I have had no fish in the tank. I thought perhaps getting better water agitation across the bottom of the tank would help. Would using Excel also be a good thing to do?


Thanks in advance for your time and any assistance!

 

[fluttermoth]

One heater should be fine, but you need to find out what wattage it is to make sure it's a suitable power.

You don't have to switch to sand. I've got a trop tank with black gravel and I'm very happy with it. It really depends on what you want to keep; if you want corydoras, I'd strongly recommend you change; they really were made for digging round in sand; it's nice for loaches too. On the other hand if your not bothered about catfish, or your going to have small plecs or otocinclus, you'll be fine to leave the gravel.

If you do want to change to sand, you can perfectly well keep the plants. This is how I do it; I scoop the plant up from underneath, taking quite a handful of gravel with it to keep the roots in a nice ball. Then just pop the whole thing, gravel and all in a hole in the sand and fill it in. The bit of gravel round the roots just stays there and you don't disrurb the plant too much.

I can't advise on algae, I've never had a problem with it (*she says smugly, lol*).

If you haven't had fish in there for two months, the good bacteria in your filter will have died off (unless you've been feeding it with ammonia or fish food?) and you'll have cycle the tank again. There are articles on cycling in the beginner's resource centre; link is in my sig

 

[KittyKat]

One heater is enough, two is always better for longer tanks.

No, it doesn't matter what substate you use if it does not affect pH and KH.

If you have had the filter without fish for two months and have not added ammonia to the aquarium, your filter becteria have probably died for the most part, you should either cycle or stock very slowly.

 

[sofakingwright]

Thanks for the replies!

I am glad I won't have to change the substrate. I do love sand and I have it in my tiny tropical tank, but I do have a lot of gravel in my large tank which would be a pain to get out so I am thinking it won't be worth it if the only benefit is appearance. I did not plan on having any loaches or catfish.

The tank is a long rectangle so I think I will experiment with one heater and watch how even the temperature is. If it appears to be fluctuating too much I can try two, although in the summer time it wouldn't be as much of a problem as in the winter I suppose!

I do have one white cloud mountain minnow in my tank, the one that escaped the goldfish's snacking habit….. I feed it a blood worm or two every couple of days, so there has been SOME fish activity in there, but no gravel nudging activity etc because the fish is so small. Will that have been enough to keep the filter bacteria alive, or should I begin cycling again? I don't plan on adding more fish until I get this algae eliminated. I removed most of it yesterday, it seemed to be coming from the moss on my driftwood so I removed all of it. Anyway it seems to have reappeared over the night *sigh*.