Aquarium Water Turn Over

[Kunal Patel]

Hi

I wanted to know basically if I am over filtering my tank or not. I have a 120 gallon FOLR tank housing 5 fish ranging from couple inches to
18 inches and I feed them every other day. No Ammonia & Nitrites, but I do have some Nitrates about 20 to 40 ppm. I do weekly water
changes of at least 30 gallons sometimes more depending on the water quality. I just did my math with my pumps and filter running every hour.
The water is filtered 14 times an hour which is about 1750 gallons each hour going through the sump, skimmer, & reactors.
Including the water filtration and wave makers there is a total of 4090 gallons of water movement each hour which is about 34 times.
I do not see any adverse affects on my fish they all have been in the system for a couple years now but other than the bio load I was
thinking this maybe be a reason my I detect some nitrates. Any opinions?

Thank You
Kunal Patel

 

[beth]

What are you using for filters? I'm seeking the source of the nitrates...18 inch fish? What is that fish and sounds way too big for a 120. What fish do you have in the tank?

 

[Kunal Patel]

What are you using for filters? I'm seeking the source of the nitrates...18 inch fish? What is that fish and sounds way too big for a 120. What fish do you have in the tank?

The biggest fish is a snowflake eel, the others are a trigger, parrot, yellow tang and hippo tang. My sump has 2 filter socks, live rock and macro algae. The Skimmer is a BH-1000 Reef Octopus. I also have
two reactors one with nitrate pearls the other has chaeto algae in it. I also have oolite sand substrate. which is fairly new since i replaced it about a month ago.

 

[jay0705]

Quick answer, you can't really over filter. Under filter definitely, but unless your fish are getting blown around there is no over filtering. Now your fish list especially the trigger, hippo, and parrot thats going to get a bit excessive especially if your 120 is a 4ft tank.

 

[beth]

Agree that. The fish load in that tank is way over. I suggest you look at the size requirements and species compatibility for your fish and plan on finding new homes for most of them.

 

[Kunal Patel]

The biggest fish is a snowflake eel, the others are a trigger, parrot, yellow tang and hippo tang. My sump has 2 filter socks, live rock and macro algae. The Skimmer is a BH-1000 Reef Octopus. I also have
two reactors one with nitrate pearls the other has chaeto algae in it.

Quick answer, you can't really over filter. Under filter definitely, but unless your fish are getting blown around there is no over filtering. Now your fish list especially the trigger, hippo, and parrot thats going to get a bit excessive especially if your 120 is a 4ft tank.

True you can't really over filter the tank, but I wasn't sure if the filtration was prevent beneficial bacteria from growing. No that is makes much of a difference but my tank is the 5ft long 120 gallon.

 

[Kunal Patel]

Agree that. The fish load in that tank is way over. I suggest you look at the size requirements and species compatibility for your fish and plan on finding new homes for most of them.

What would be a good number of fish to keep in the tank? I guess it all really depends on the type of fish I keep too.

 

[beth]

It's not number of fish you have to look at. It is the size of those fish, and their compatibility with the size of your tank and the other species that you wish to keep. Seems you want to keep larger fish so you will not be able to do keep many in your tank. Also the amt of LR you have in your tank is a consideration as well. Compatibility with tank size and environment and with other species is what you need to look at. You tank is mostly aggressive it seems. If you fill up your tank with large fish that don't play nice with each other, it will soon become not so nice environment. The two tangs are very likely to fight with each other, and that tank is too small for 2 let alone the other large fish included. What are the species of parrot and trigger fish?