i was wondering if you guys could give me some advice
i have a 4ft tank that measures 48" x 24 x 18 i have 2 300 w super fish heaters so thats not the problem!!! i think the problem might be filtration ive got a fluval 2+ a fluval 3 and just recently bought a aqua pro 3 its a amazing filter for the price i only paaid 14.99 and compared to the fluvals its a much better filter it dont need cleaning half as much as my other fluvals abd it keeps the water circulating 100% before i bought me aqua pro 3 i had a bacterial bloom due to filter maintanence as when 1 of my filter needs cleaning the other 1 was always slowing down so now i bought the aqua pro 3 i always clean 1 and leave the other 2 to help colonise the bacteria, do you guys think i got enough filtration???? thanks for reading this ashley

I think you're okay with your filtration. It never hurts to have more filtration than you actually need. I would advise you to put as much biological filtration in your canister as possible.

Most filters have a rating for the tank size they will be ok for. This is usually ok for a community tank, oscar need twice as much as they are messy fish. So tot up the rating for all for filter and if the total is at least twice the size of your tank you will be ok. If its more then that is not a problem, you can have too much filtration

sorry guys its a aqua flow 3, not aqua pro 3, as for the cannister filter i dont have one ive got 3 internal filters and 1 of them has got activated carbon init aswell as filter floss and normal foam, OFL can you pm me plz about bioligical filtration plz as much as i read about it it just pickles my brain i need someone to tell me what i need to know

regards ash:P

your tank works out to about 75imp gals or 87us gals so in theory you would need about 10x your tank size for proper filtration(using internal filters) or 870 us gals per hour.the fluval 2 pushes about 105 gal(us)per hour and the fluval 3 185(us)per hour . the aqua pro 3 does about 200 (us )gal an hour.so you would have a combined rate of appr.490 us gals/hour. so you will eventually need more filtration. imo a fluval 405 or an fluval fx (or the eheim equivilant)would be the best solution for your filtration needs.also canisters are good for loading more than one tray with biological media

but like i said thats just my opinion

Internal filters are no where near as good as external cannister filters and they take room up in your tank. If i was you i would buy the largest external filter you can afford. It must be rated at least for a tank twice the size of your tank, but it can be rated for higher. Remember you cant over filter

I have a Rena XP4 canister filter. Talking GPH and media trays to dollars spent I don't think you can really get a better deal.

well thats a great help thanks you guys at ofl!!!! another thing i dont like is that with my tank having 3 internal filters they take up alot of space and now this morning i noticed my oscar must have rubbed past or just brushed against my 1 of my 3 internal filters and now there is a nasty scrape along the back of my oscar WHTA SHALL I USE TO TREAT??????(METHYLENE BLUE???) as it says on the bottle to apply it on the required area????
regards ash

unless your oscar has a serious gash on him i would just make sure the water parameters are good and wait for him to heal. oscars heal extremly quickly so i would not worry overly about it. just keep an eye on to watch for for a secondary infection setting in.

to help in avoiding these kind of accidents you should consider removing the internal and getting yourself a canister.

there are tons of canister filters on the market. i would recommend getting the best and biggest you can afford then yuor filtration probs will be done with .remember you cant have to much filtration.

is an internal filter really necessary for oscars? i have 2 penguin bio wheels lol but thats only for my 50 gal.

I would still do away with internal filtration altogether, unless of course you're using that alongside more beefier filtration. Bio filtration is good for biological filtration, however I am still in the opinion that if you keep messy fish like Oscars, you are much better off using a large external filter that is good at pulling out solid waste. They don't sell those bio wheels over here in the UK, I've only seen them for sale in the USA. I haven't seen any that are rated for more than around 70 gallons which obviously means they are really only meant for community tanks, i.e. fish that are not very messy. If you are going to keep Oscars, get yourself some really powerful filtration that has pipes that reach down to the substrate, this is where you will remove a lot of solid waste as well as having lots of space for biological filtration.

This may be going to the extremes, but if you want to keep your tank relatively free of solid waste, get yourself two external canisters at either end of your tank and use sand.

ofl i dont understand biological filtration??? and then the other 1 mechanical filtration????? its like the more i read about it the more it just dont make sense