Opinions on my friends 120gal no filter

The friendliest place on the web for anyone with an interest in aquariums or fish keeping!
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.

Reefer James

Aquarium Advice Freak
Joined
Jun 16, 2015
Messages
341
Location
Orange County
This is my friends 120gal aquarium with no attached filtration. It's been up and running for around 8-10 months now since we moved it from his old house.

The main areas for filtration is in that porous rock in the display.


Just curious in everyones opinion! Sorry its kind of cloudy we just had finished a 70g water change
 
Hey, i'm no expert on reef aquariums having not owned one but are you kind of doing a reef set up but as freshwater using rock to house the beneficial bacteria? I would personally get a canister filter to polish the water and get the gunk out otherwise you might end up doing an absolute crap load of water changes not having a protein skimmer. Correct me if I'm wrong in my assumptions.

once you get a filter you could get some discus perhaps? They are really cool. A massive clan of discus of all different colours. that's what I'd do in that sized tank. And a heap of cardinal tetras. Plus get pressurized co2 with an outlet at each end and plant some real nice plants. Use seachem flourite as substrate or eco-complete to keep the plants happy.
 
Are there powerheads in the tank?

If there are powerheads, it would be doable. If not then i would say its a bit too overstocked.

Really, i fail to see a reason to go with an unfiltered tank. Thats basically going back to the stone ages of fish keeping when air pumps were first invented.
 
Nice!

I have an unfiltered, heavily planted 10g that's absolutely thriving.
 
Of course there's circulation pumps, that's the only way water is being effectively moved through those rock pores.

I see no point in doing it and I have not seen this tank since I helped him relocate it. I guess his canister broke and he just went with it... And no fish died haha. This was the first water change above 10.5g (He uses a 3.5g bucket) in over half a year. I drain two 35gal worth of waste into my 44g trash can and we picked up the trash can together and dumped it over the balcony... twice haha. Even after adding back all the new water I was able to gravel vac another 5g of just grossness that had settled on the sand.

By no means is this a recommended set up, but it's interesting he's made it work...

If it it was my aquarium I'd be doing things differently. I did really really like the tank because of how simple it was, but how cool of an eco-system it was to watch.

As far as I'm concerned that's a nice aquarium with great hobby rewards when viewing. There's two 12"+ leporinus in there who switch between those caves all day. Obviously this friend of mine is pushing the compatibility charts pretty hard... He's found a set of hardy fish and hasn't experienced fish lost in 2 months. He told me he does a mostly veggie feeding. He said he mainly will feed algae wafers.

So I can see his line of thought... I like it haha.
 
I must confess I was wondering if it went cloudy white like a bacterial bloom or was cloudy from debris from cleaning.
 
I must confess I was wondering if it went cloudy white like a bacterial bloom or was cloudy from debris from cleaning.

Is this directed at me? When I first went over I thought the substrate was black. It was filfthy. When I do a vaccume I'm draining like 1g per 30-60seconds so it's quite slow with the use of a ball valve. Despite even with these slow speeds and care not to disturb the substrate some of the debris did just float up. Wasn't a bacteria bloom.

The tank was cleared up the next morning when I dropped him off after the party haha.
 
That setup seems like it could crash easily, but if it works it works.

I'll be honest, I have always wanted to attempt a 0-maintenance, 0 filtration tank. A huge tank with just a small school of hardy fish (probably cherry barbs), tons of easy plants, some chemically active substrate to maintain hardness and nutrients.... and just see how long it goes for.
 
It may be " making it" in all honesty it looks pretty dreary, more like a lack of love than labor.. to each his own I suppose.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G900A using Aquarium Advice mobile app
 
I mean it may be cloudy from the recent 50%+ water change but I don't think white rock, with a driftwood cave, and rock cave network looks dreary..

If I posted a video of the tank with clear water I don't think dreary would be an adjective used to describe this hardscape.
 
Is this directed at me? When I first went over I thought the substrate was black. It was filfthy. When I do a vaccume I'm draining like 1g per 30-60seconds so it's quite slow with the use of a ball valve. Despite even with these slow speeds and care not to disturb the substrate some of the debris did just float up. Wasn't a bacteria bloom.



The tank was cleared up the next morning when I dropped him off after the party haha.


Ah, gotcha - many thanks for the info back. Was wondering.
 
That setup seems like it could crash easily, but if it works it works.

I'll be honest, I have always wanted to attempt a 0-maintenance, 0 filtration tank. A huge tank with just a small school of hardy fish (probably cherry barbs), tons of easy plants, some chemically active substrate to maintain hardness and nutrients.... and just see how long it goes for.


I did one for 6 months by not being home. It technically had a filter but was the old air powered ones (carbon, filter floss). Came back and plants had done well (on old light I never changed), swordtail fry swimming around and water looked clear. I never had a test kit but I wonder now what the ph dropped to.
 
Back
Top Bottom