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ole scratch

Aquarium Advice Regular
Joined
Aug 26, 2013
Messages
61
I'm going to change my 75 g from fine sand to coarse sand. I'm tired of my cichlids destroying my filters. I think I'm going to go with 2 Aqueon 55/75's with slight mods done. Then I'm going to fix my 405 and run it as nothing but mechanical (the 4 main foam pads) and bio (fill all 4 trays with the bio pellets) filtration. I personally feel that the carbon in the 55/75 pads is enough for my 75 g. How some ever, I'm not to impressed with the bio filtration of the 55/75. With 2 of them, I'm not sure if it will have enough wet-dry/trickle filtration. Where I live, the water is horrible. I'm fighting an uphill battle from the moment I turn the tap on and add the water treatment. This is on a freshwater cichlid and cat tank. What is ya'lls thoughts on this upcoming setup. I'm going to change sand. Give 24 hours to settle. Then add 1 new filter and rebuilt 405. Wait minimum of 2 weeks then replace 2 year old original filter with 2nd new filter. Is there anything I'm missing? Will be saving as much cycled water as possible to prevent new tank after changing sand. This whole filter assassination by sand spitting cichlids is getting old and expensive.
 
What about buying an ro unit to clean the water better. I got my used one for 50 bucks and it produces about 40 gallons every 24 hours or so.

Also I would consider using gravel. Cichlids love to build a home so the harder is is to move the better.
 
I'm looking for a very fine grade gravel or very large coarse sand. I may start buying the RO water from the grocery store. Its something like $0.30 for 5 gallons. To keep some minerals, I may start doing half treated tap and half RO. I actually developed a red algae bloom from treated tap water in my first tank here. I finally had to throw out the whole setup including the tank. Happily, it was only a 20 gallon. I had to wait until cold weather before I could start a new tank.
 
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