I have been offered the vision 450 of someone i know for 200 pound, the tank is only 6 months old so im tempted to say yes, but he told me it has a built in filter, does anyone know if its any good? and what kind of filter it is?
at the moment i have an eheim 2213 external and a fluval 4 internal, would this be enough for a vision 450 considering it has a built in filter.
any help would be great.

Your tank is a tad under 100 gallons. The internal filter will obviously be rated for their tank size. However, I have had Jewel aquariums (assuming yours is a jewel) before. I found the internal filtration was not enough to keep up with the waste to Oscars produce. So whereas your canister filter is only rated up to around 250 L, it will certainly help deal with the extra waste the Oscars will produce. At some stage, you might be wise to increase the filtration.

SO you dont think the built in filter, a ehiem 2213 and a internal fluval 4 will be enough for a juwel vision 450?
in the tank will be 2 oscars, which are about 3-4 inches in size, 2 parrots, and a pleco which is about 5 inches now.
if it wont be enough i assume i'll have to get rid of the eheim 2213 and buy another external, can anyone suggest 1?
or would it be ok?

Now you have mentioned all the fish you intend on having, no, the filtration will not be enough. In fact your tank is not big enough for all those fish are assuming that the pleco will be one of the big ones. However, I would recommend the 2028, superb filter

what make is the 2028?
and the parrots wont be around long, my cousin will be taking them once their tank has cycled, which will be about another 4 weeks, my oscars are only 3-4 inches so it aint a problem yet.
so in 4 weeks, there will only be 2 oscars, and a pleco, which i think YES is one of those big ones. im thinking about getting rid of it and buying one of the smaller ones.

also... someone quoted me earlier and said this....
i do throw the carbon and poly filter of the internal system in the bin , and add a further course bio sponge , this cuts down dramaticly maintanace time in the filter , and also means there are no sponges to replace on a regular basis , both removed sponges are not needed unless you have a problem within your tank.

is this a good idea? i know you guys are experts so some advise on this will be great.
thanks guys, Glen.

I would never describe myself as an expert.

The 2028 is an Ehiem canister filter that is rated up to 125 gallons. If you search around, you can get them for really good prices since everyone is competing against each other, especially now we are in a recession.

Time is something you haven't got when Keeping Oscars. Remember that these guys grow very quickly. They normally grow around 1 inch a month.

If you have got one other large plecos I would definitely recommend renaming it. These guys have the potential to grow over 24 inches, they can grow to over 12 inches within the year. The only thing they contribute to a tank is turning the water to crap.

Don't bother with carbon in your calculation, 99.9% of the time it's not needed. Carbon is used to remove impurities from the water. It's good for removing old medication, apart from that it doesn't really do anything. If you don't change on a regular basis, it could leach toxins back into the water which is obviously bad news.

I would recommend adding as much biological filtration is you can and just top it off with some mechanical. I only use one sponge in my filters, the rest of the trays contain biological. I must add that I had tea canister filters which are both rated to 125 gallons on my 125 gallon tank. This cuts down on maintenance by one heck of a lot. Obviously the less filtration you have, the more maintenance you will carry out. Going overboard on your filtration certainly isn't a bad thing. The only drawback is that it will use more electricity.

i have been reading alot of reviews on the net over the last hour or so and noticed alot of people saying the eheim 2028 is not that good, and the fx5 is much better,
whats your views of this?
is the fx5 alot better?

ive never used a 2028 but i do have a couple of fx5's and i find they work very well in my oscar tank. i have never heard anything bad about any eheim filter and have a friend who has one and swears by it. the big thing to remember when comparing filters is that you compare similar items(i.e. rated tank size, performance and sometimes price points).

glen2009 wrote:

if you need information on FX5, go to "WRITE A REVIEW".
there is a good posting about FX5, and necromancer had
a link about it. very interesting.

innovationlandscaping.com/fx5/

Thats a really good link paul, thanks alot mate.
I think i'll be buying the FX5 instesd of the eheim.
it looks like such a good filter.

the credit should go with cris aka necromancer4
he is the one who posted it... i just pass it on
to you.

oh right, well thanks alot anyway, and thanks alot to necromancer4 as well.
i know i can always trust you guys to come up with answers.
i'll get some pictures up once i get my new tank and the fx5 and get my little oscars in there.