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As you can see from what I have below, I have a few decent filters in my 35g tank. I also have a pengiun 550 powerhead that I used to run all the time. That is until I changed my gravel to sand. I haven't had it on for 1 full day now and I'm wondering if this would affect anything on the filters or my fish? I like to use it as much as I can, I think it provides good circulation. The only thing is that it kicks up a little bit of the sand and makes the tank a little cloudy. Any suggestions or help on what I can do to make this think pump less water?

I can see no advantage to using a powerhead in a 35 gallon tank...

Your filtration is plenty enough to create surface motion, the only reason for a powerhead.

Remember that fish require a calm place to rest with little or no turbulance.

--garyroland.

I thought that I might turn it on for an hour or so a day to circulate more water and give the fish more oxygen. Also, it is impossible to syphone this sand, it just gets sucked up. This sand is so fine that all I have to do is shake up the sand on the bottom and everything floats to the surface of the sand. But then what do I do. I can't vaccum it or scoop it out with a net. Could I use the powerhead to circulate the water enough for my filters to catch the excess?

Oxygen exchange only takes place at the surface of the water...

The more surface agitation the more increased oxygen/gas exchange.

I can see the sand particles clogging/stopping your filters especially if the particles get into the impeller housing.

Sand is not the substrate of choice as you no doubt are discovering. Consider removal.

--garyroland.



[span class="edited"][Edited by garyroland 2004-08-21 16:59][/span]

Your right, I am finding this out about this sand stuff. However, there has to be a way to get this stuff clean, it seems so simple. My fluval already creates enough surface agitation to provide oxygen then right? The output sits right at the break of the surface. The intake sits 3" from the surface. Then I've got the aqua clear 150. I don't think this would turn up the surface because theres about 20" before you reach the sand. Should I move the intake of my Fluval up a little bit? I really like the sand, it does look sharp. I also spend many hours trying to get this stuff in my tank successfully without hurting my fish or make the water murkey. My power head is turned off all day and I haven't seen the sand move once. Thanks for your help.

pmdaggett,
I'm running a powerhead in my 30, but I've also managed to kill the impeller on my filter because of being a bit messy about letting the sand kick up when doing water changes, even with the intake raised.

I've found that adding some filter floss to the intake (additional mechanical filtration) and angeling the powerhead to aim @the side of the tank then reflect seems to reduce how much hits and thereby kicks up the sand.

^_^

Thanks, matter of fact I just bought this foam pre-filter for it and put it on just a minute ago. The output has been set to reflect off the glass, but I'm not sure thats helping. See my tank is a hex, so all its doing is making a circular motion around the surface of the water, I'm sure I'll let you know what happpens here in about an hour. Oh, by the way, I just bought this huge hunk of wood from an lfs, cost me $18. Its really nice. I'm soaking it in a 5 gallon bucket, rinsing it every 5 minutes or so. Kind of like when I rinsed my sand. It sure is bleeding a lot though, is there something else I should do before putting it into my tank?

Now heres another issue as a result of not running my powerhead I think. I've got cloudy water. I know what cloudy water is and the "nutrient bloom". Its been 2 days since I've had cloud water and I really haven't done anything yet. Should I? Or will it take a couple days for the water to clear up?

Depends on the color of the cloud. A "nutrient bloom" as you mentioned would be green, from excees nutrients causing a algae explosion. A white cloud will either be from additional sand particles (seems the stuff never goes away right )...or from the effects of a mini-cycle. If it's white I'd be running ammonia and nitrIte tests.

As for your driftwood, I'd suggest a 5-10 minute boil to kill any possible buggers, and keep up with the rinsing. Not only do you need to remove the tannic acids, but you're also rinsing to remove any pollutants.


^_^