Info about your tank setups pls

[burak]

Hello;

I am a member since quite a time here.

I used to own several Apistogramma species (which I managed t find in my country, Turkey) in my very amateur fish rack; including some different arts of cacatoides, Inka, Gibbicebs, Agassizi, Borellies as Apistos; and German & Bolivian Rams and finally L. Dorsigera. I say I used to,since I lost them all in a 4 weeks period for 2 years ago - thanks to my central filtering system - and my one time mistake; In which I have been adding two female German Rams -from a very trusted friend of mine- directly to one of my tanks in my rack for the first and last time during my almost 2 years of experience with dwarfs. That was a literally catastrophe for me.. Some kind of white hole in the head disease killed everything, including my will to go on with this hobby. Since then I have only been following this forum as a silent watcher and sold everything.. Changed my job.. Got married

It took me 2 years to find the strength in me to give it another try.

The main problem for me is to find Apisto species in Turkey.. I had been buying my earlier Apistos mostly from EU, by travelling there and bringing them home with plane by myself.. This time It will be more or less the same; most probably mainly from Belgium, of course if I can find any breeders-importers there ( So, any kind of info about apistos in Belgium will be very much welcome).

My main question is about your tank setups. I am planning to use 60X40X30(h)= 72 liter tanks; this time with all seperate filtering systems. What do you suggest me to use? My initial plan is setting up Hamburger Matt Filters to each tank and supporting it with sponge filters. What are your experiences with HMFs? I think I saw that Ted is using HMFs in some of his tanks (Yes, I am also following Ted's fishrom, seen them on videos. At least I think I have seen ). How efficient do you find them as bio filters? What do you think about my planned tanks size?

Thank you in advance for reading my very long post and also for your answers..

Best regards.

 

[Hmoobthor]

Hello;

I am a member since quite a time here.

I used to own several Apistogramma species (which I managed t find in my country, Turkey) in my very amateur fish rack; including some different arts of cacatoides, Inka, Gibbicebs, Agassizi, Borellies as Apistos; and German & Bolivian Rams and finally L. Dorsigera. I say I used to,since I lost them all in a 4 weeks period for 2 years ago - thanks to my central filtering system - and my one time mistake; In which I have been adding two female German Rams -from a very trusted friend of mine- directly to one of my tanks in my rack for the first and last time during my almost 2 years of experience with dwarfs. That was a literally catastrophe for me.. Some kind of white hole in the head disease killed everything, including my will to go on with this hobby. Since then I have only been following this forum as a silent watcher and sold everything.. Changed my job.. Got married

It took me 2 years to find the strength in me to give it another try.

The main problem for me is to find Apisto species in Turkey.. I had been buying my earlier Apistos mostly from EU, by travelling there and bringing them home with plane by myself.. This time It will be more or less the same; most probably mainly from Belgium, of course if I can find any breeders-importers there ( So, any kind of info about apistos in Belgium will be very much welcome).

My main question is about your tank setups. I am planning to use 60X40X30(h)= 72 liter tanks; this time with all seperate filtering systems. What do you suggest me to use? My initial plan is setting up Hamburger Matt Filters to each tank and supporting it with sponge filters. What are your experiences with HMFs? I think I saw that Ted is using HMFs in some of his tanks (Yes, I am also following Ted's fishrom, seen them on videos. At least I think I have seen ). How efficient do you find them as bio filters? What do you think about my planned tanks size?

Thank you in advance for reading my very long post and also for your answers..

Best regards.

I don't know anything about the HMF. but Sponge filter are widely use in most tanks so I don't see why you can't use them.

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,
Sponge filters are very good, have a look at this page <http://www.swisstropicals.com/Poret%20Filter%20Foam.html>.

If you can't get the Poret Foam (I had to get mine from Germany, and I like the coarse ppi10 foam) you can buy "Huey Hung" style sponge filter from Hong Kong relatively cheaply, you can run these from an air pump or power-head.

Sometimes AF member "Apistomaster", made some useful posts about his techniques of using sponge/powerheads on "PlanetCatfish". I'm not sure whether you have to be a member to access this, but they are here: <http://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=31213&start=0> & <http://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=31782>.

cheers Darrel

 

[burak]

Hello;

Thank you very much for your answers.

Darrel; additional thanks for the links. They will be very helpful.

With HMF; I mean the first two pictures on this link: http://www.swisstropicals.com/Poret%20Filter%20Foam.html