Thank you so much Jay. I am starting a dirted 5 gal tank that I eventually want to put some Cherry shrimp in & I need a simpler way to understand the basics of fish keeping. So many other videos on RU-vid are too confusing for me. FINALLY someone who can make it understandable! 😂
I have no idea why I did not see this before!!! And I have always thought of it in terms of fish size, but the reality is that once a fish is fully grown it eats less, I see this all the time and have to reduce feeding amounts once a group of fish reach full size, I never thought that this is reducing the load on my filters!! You have a great way of explaining things, I am working my way through your old videos as I only found your channel. Great work!
One of *BEST* explanation on filtration. Good job. The 3rd part of this list is not necessary for most people, though, as fluidized bed filtration is irrelevant to aquarium hobbyist. As someone who majored in Chemical Engineering back in the day, your 3rd part on fluidized bed filtration triggered PTSD in me :)
To the contrary, fluidised bed has a place in aquarium keeping. I have used it in the past to scrub the O2 before an anoxic nitrate filters for Tanganyikan Dwarf cichlids. The bacteria are very efficient at fixing the oxygen to Nitrite, forming nitrate and thus depleting the water at the outflow into the anoxic system. I have also used them very successfully in reefs where a sump or other tricl;e system was not possible and UG not desirable.
This is the best videos I have seen in filtration so far. His no water changes series is also great. Liked and Subed also put them on a play list. Great job.
This is why they tell you to remove food not eaten within the first 3 minutes. This is an interesting take on what is an appropriate bio load. Basically the 1 inch per gallon "rule" doesn't matter.
I found your videos while searching for anoxic filtration and I really liked the no water change series. Though dropping a comment here to say how much my Betta likes your hand-drawn fish in this video 😅🤣
I found that, when I fed my fishes slowly and once a day, the need to change the water was only once a month... When I fed them every other day, the water change was around 2 months and that's considering my filter is weaker than what I actually need in my tank. So yeah I agree, food and a good filter is key and avoidance of dead spots!
Live foods and more filters, though smaller will allow daily feeding, multiple times. Use a box filter type thing for Physical waste removal and then have a bacteria biological filter that rarely gets disturbed for biological filtration. You can put charcoal or other chemical filters into the box filter along with filter floss and sponge to catch waste physically. I often run a sponge, a box and a hang on filter. None of them are big enough for the tank, all together they are more than enough. Always put the inflow at the opposite end of the tank to the outflow as the water will then have to flow from one end to the other to pass through the system. This might require an extra elbow or 2 and some length of pipe, but it is worth it for the result.
But you will not add the same amount of food when you have 1 vs 10 fish. So the more fish, the more pollution....you can not add the same amount of food for 10 fish as you do for one.
Excellent...This video has made me clear about fish pond filtration requirement. But how can we understand food feed rate for fish. Any video is available?
man, really, i'm so pleased to have found you.. i find ur content one of the best in the all youtube fish community.. keep it up pls! where did u learn all this? how long have u been an aquarist?
Thanks for taking the time to make these videos. Lots of good information presented clearly with good illustrations. I wish a lot of the other instructional or "how to" aquarium channels were as well done.
I've heard the opposite. Through evaporation and topping off with water the minerals are concentrated. Wonder what's true. It's probably depends on how much minerals are absorbed by plants and fish.
The fish produce waste in the form of ammonia nd in this process the uneaten food also contribute significantly So that's why food should not be overfeed ur fish Nd this waste subsequently changes to nitrite nd nitrate by nitrobactor nd nitrosomonas So to remove nitrogen nd replanish the mineral in water which is eaten by fish to renew that mineral this step is performed Water replacement
How much food is not so much a determination for how much filtration is needed. Live foods and frozen foods will require less filtration than flakes which pollute everything. Flakes will require more than pellets. Foods the fish really enjoy will be eaten faster. There are many factors beyond mere volume of food fed.
I am stocking 25 carps of about 2kg each (so total of 50kg of fish) in 800 liters of water. I do not feed them anything. It has been 3 weeks so far with regular water changes and no loses. I also used seachem stability. Can you please tell me if: 1.) do I need the seachem stability or can I just get away with regular water changes? and 2.) how many kg of fish am I expected to lose in a given time, say 2 months (given the no feeding diet)?
The amount of total living biomass is an independant variable. If a fish dies, unless you find it and remove it, its decomposition will be a source of pollution too.
Jay you have indeed made me smarter. One question: I feed my SA Cichlids floating pellets. Then they poop. Then my pleco eats that poop and seems to produce more waste than the fish did. But how?
I don't know why u always blame me for everything u feed cichhids pettet 🤤but I hv to eat his poop 🤢🤮still u hv complaints🥴 ...I'm not going to handle this things bye 😷 - pleco
Please don't add music to your videos... First: music is all about taste and tastes differ.... Second: I really have trouble hearing what you're saying because of the music. Conclusion: you don't need music
Can you help answer & rectify this? I know that different bio media from marine pure pumice, ceramic rings, bio balls or k1 all have different surface area & efficiency. I see some have 20 Mbuna's in a tank with one Fluval FX5, then another person with same amount of fish with 3 identical FX5 canisters on same tank or a person with 25 liters of bio media with same tank. If I told you I'm setting up a 100 gallon tank with 40 adult Mbuna cichlids, how much bio media filtration is needed? I'm not caring about mechanical filtration or 10 time turn over rates here etc, purely biological needs. Does a person just setup one canister with 2 trays of a certain media & pray it helps then adds one tray with more media until water is clear & all test kits read ammonia, nitrates 0 & nitrates 20 or less, otherwise keep adding more bio media? Has to be some science & not amateur hour, right? Lol
Michael Piccirillo 1) the mechanicals filtration is more important. You can’t have efficient bio filtering unless you have good mechanicals as the media will clog and not sustain as much bacteria. 2) a lot of people don’t ever run bio media’s and sumo,y use sponge (mechanical filters) mechanical filters also build the same bacteria just not as much. 3) the amount of bacteria you can grow is dependent upon tank load. The bacteria have to eat too. 4) one of the most important things in filtration is water turn over rate.. ideally you want to turn over 10x the water in the tank every hour. Basic rule is 5x the tank quantity. This works fine but you will need more chemicals filtration items to have same water clarity. Reason is you can only run so much fine media before you burn up a pump as it greatly reduces flow rate. 5) flow rates on filters is as advertised when empty. Meaning no filtering of any sort.. the more you add the lower the flow becomes. A rated 500gph canister when properly setup will only flow 325gph or so. 6) some do it cause they are seeding a filter for a later tank setup. 7) the more filtering you have the less maintenance on each filter you will have. 8) by having more then one filter you can maintain one filter at a time and reduce impact on tank. 9) some fish like strong current some don’t 10) some people like to breed which is most easily done by over feeding. Abundant food and oxygenated water equals baby fish more so then water temp, ph, hardness etc.. 11) some like running different setups with each doing a specific purpose.. one might be responsible for fine filtering, another for bio media, another chemical filtering and water clarity etc.. Now to get to the basic question of what you should run within the given parameters.. it varies a little based on tank shape.. but I’ll assume you are running a 100l rectangular tank. Personally I’m always a fan of undergravel filters as I like the much getting sucked to the bottom where I can vac it out as well as it is the single best source of bio filtration as you will have tons of substrate that would never fit into 30 canister filters. As cichilads love rocks the rock will restrict your circulation so you’ll want at least two small power heads to put near your dead spots. On my longer tanks I like running two canisters one with very high flow rate and one I’m not so co corned with. A primary and a secondary if you will. I always run prefilters on canister Intakes. They improve canister main intervals 10x over. Only thing I have to do regularly is replace my filter floss in my primary filter. I would prefer to run it in my secondary but there is a reason I don’t.. My primary is my main biological filter. Personally I like the marineland 360 canisters and the main reason is number of trays vs most others as well as a larger per tray surface area vs others. With pet perks at petsmart you can usually get one for $100 which equals the sunsun304b which is slightly smaller however has higher flow rates. I run this filter with corse prefilter. Next I dump small bio balls that come with it into the base. From there I run a corse then medium pad then a fine floss. (Always run the fine pad in the mechanical tray to keep from clogging media. This is why I can’t run it in my secondary cause this is my main bio media filter.) with the prefilter I get almost 0 muck after 3 months of running and can easily go 6m between cleanings and it’s similar to most people doing monthly cleans if not better. Next I run my corsest bio media. I like fluval biomax and Ehiem biomech. One box of each placing the mike chin first then the biomax. Reason is both these media’s are better suited to function with gunk buildup that passes the sponges but with proper filtration I’m getting 2-3x the life span advertised from both. Third tray I run sustrate pro. Biohome or any other similar high grade media would work. The fourth tray I run some more bio from third tray and top of off which chemipure blue 3x plus 1 carbon bag. If your not a carbon fan then run 4. I personally like carbon as it really good at sucking chemicals out of the water. Not that brings me to my secondary canister. This is a much smaller canister which I mostly use like a powerhead to move water across the tank.however my thought it if I’m moving water I may as well filter it some too. My second canister runs same type mechanical minus the fine pad for water polishing. Instead I use two medium pads. The rest is all biomax media. (Its moderate cheap works moderately well and easy to get off the shelf almost anywhere) tbh I would even run cheap pos bio balls or that cheap ceramic rings if that all I had.. this filter main purpose is moving water more so then filtering. I place both intakes in the same corner.. the primary is on the bottom 1” off the substrate. The secondary is just in front but raised up so the prefilter sits on top of the main prefilter slightly staggered and higher in the water column to get pull from the bottom which is normals as well as the middle of the tank creating a lot of suction to that same spot. I then have my main outlet just under the water line facing up in the front for aeration. It’s in the front corner just ahead of my intakes facing the front of the tank going long ways. This makes the best use of the higher flow to get to the opposite side. I then put the smaller outlet same manner but in the dead corner on the back wall facing back towards the intakes. This creates really good circulation, with a rip current effect that sucks everything Quickly across the entire tank to the intakes. I do have rocks plants etc in the tank and they all creat additional dead zones.. I place the smaller most discreet power heads I can find cheap pointed at these areas to help the counter clockwise circulation if created. The only major dead spot with this setup is under the secondary outlet. Even an air stone will eliminate this but with an exclusive cichilid setup you’ll have more obstacles to me user around. My advice on rock placement is to place the majority in the middle portion of the tank and you can fix the deadspot with likely just one small powerhead using my setup. I run a main tank community tank with bumblebee cichilads, slider turtles and numerous guppies, tetras, Bala and rainbows sharks, and all your other typical cheap pet store fish.. nothing is a dirty as a turtle and I vac my gravel lightly as needed which is normally 2x a month and only add back the water needed for the vac. I have crystal clear water like we all see in videos here, and I over feed my tank like crazy. My turtle like to eat all fish and my cichilads live fry. I always have at least 30+ fish plus turtles and 20-30 fry daily in my tank. I have the dirtiest never do everything setup and have 5x less maintenance then almost everyone. Replace polishing pads monthly light vac and water top off.. that’s it for 6 months easy. My tank runs 40-60 nitrates on average and 0-0 as it should elsewhere. I use normal tap water with 1/2 the conditioner listed in bottles and always have 0 chlorine but that’s one of the reasons I run carbon in my main and I also run carbon on my undergravel tubes. Not saying my shit is the best but I’ve spent a lot of time watching every video around and watching them over and over.. the one thing I can say without a doubt.. my tanks look as good as theirs and I do almost nothing they do and most of what they say not to I get same results and half a fraction of the maintenance.. the maintenance is what I’ve strived for for a long time.. constant water changes and filter cleans is for the birds.. I want to look at my tank not clean it..
It seems you may have forgot that fish also urinate. More fish means more pee. Fish load is a large factor in my opinion. You can minimize feeding but not drinking..the more fish you have, the more filtration you need.
Fish produce ammonia passively through their gills, the amount of fish actively metabolising food raises ammonia. Ammonia kills fish. Bacteria will always equal ammonia production over time. Fish activity equals ammonia production. Over feeding fouls water by creating excessive organic particles which hetrotrophic bacteria need to process. For this you need a large surface area to house the hetrotrophic bacteria on a surface that allows them to create a biofilm. The biofilm will catch organics and the bacteria will process it. I mean I get what your on about. Let's discuss this topic.
Excessive feeding isn't going to kill fish. It will however decrease visual water quality leading to more maintenance. But the smallest filter recommended for a tank will move enough water to ensure aerobic activity which will colonise every available surface in tank and filter. What you will get is excessive organics building up and have excessive hetrotrophic biofilms form. Which will look shitty and there for indirectly influence more maintenance or excessive cleaning which will disrupt bacterial colonies and that would lead to fish been poisoned. But a small filter with excessive feeding isn't going to kill fish. Probably just have your water looking trashy with floating particles.
Exactly what we need to find out. But the amount of variability between tanks, food, water quality and quantity, types of fish and other animals and quantity, tires of plants and quantity; makes it virtually impossible to a precise answer.
Actually with fish, for the most part they don't pee. They typically excrete ammonia directly through their gills. That said, the fish poops are still broken down by bacteria and the bacteria's protein metabolism also results in ammonia.
