hi everyone!

as some of you know i have recently become the mommy of 2 teeny baby oscars...
however they dont live with me, they live with my boyfriend...they are his fish, i just claimed them as mine as soon as he got them home lol

anyway...

i seem to have fallen in love with the oscars and now want some of my own at my place :angry: (this is apparently called "oscar envy" hehehehehe). so this year for my birthday (my mum calls it my quarter life crisis lmao) ive decided that i am going to buy myself a big fish tank possibly up to 120gallons (i dont want anything too big...so 4ft-5ft would be a good size for me... )

now for the questions...

the tanks ive been having a look at seem to be like my teeny 10gallon aqua one tank. they have a trickle filter. is that going to be enough of a filtration system?

also...how long should i cycle it for? any advice on cycling?

any other random bits of advice would be well appreciated too!

thanks!

hi, there.
Here's an article on how to cycle a tank

www.oscarfishlover.com/how-to-cycle-a-tank

Filtration capacity should be high for an Oscar and a turnover rate of 5x is not unusual.
Get a filter with at least twice the capacity of your tank per hour.
i say get a tank as big as possible and 120 gallon 5 foot seems very nice!

If oscars are what you want, you need no less than 55 gallons for ONE Oscar. And then you need a good sized Canister filter. a 10 gallon is pointless.

There is a section on the home page, and LOTS of advice on the forum that will explain cycling!!!

Good Luck

hey Nicki, the kid is eyeing a 120 gal tank but with a concept similar to
her teeny 10 gal aqua one tank...

lol!

my 10gal has guppies in it...my other other babies hehehehe

what i meant was that the other tanks i was looking at today, which were 4ft-5ft tanks all had the same flippy lid with lights a trickle filter (or at least they looked like a trickle filter) and i dont know if thats going to be good enough (my guppies are okay with iit, but gosh theyre not oscars lol). now the reason i was looking at those is because they already came with a stand etc. mind you i only looked in the one fish store. i will bee looking at other places once i get the money together...

now that being said.

say i get one of the flippy lid tanks with their trickle filter-ma-bob...can i just stick an internal filter inside it? will that do the trick?

or is my best option really getting non flippy lid tank (lol) and getting a canister filter?

hehehehehe im setting up a fishie fund money box now...right next to the shoes fund money box and new camera lens fund money box. heeheeheeheehee

I get the impression you were looking at complete setups? Don't bother with those, they are a waste of time because you will end up getting separate filters when you realize that the internal filters on these complete setup aquariums are actually inadequate.

Get your tank, filters, lighting, heating all separate. If you go for a tank with a cabinet, make sure it's got all the holes cut out in the back, that will save you a lot of hassle in the long run. I would absolutely definitely going for a canister filter in your case.

go for the best you can afford, if you can get someone that knows what there doing to build a stand for you it will save you money,

redsea are one of the best tank makers around in the uk if they ship or not i dont know, they use much better sand resulting in better clearer glass,

the money you save on the cabinet could easly get you an external canaster filter something like the fluval fx5 is around £150 tank around £200,

not a bad set up and half the price of the all in one tanks but remember water is heavy 1l = ikg plus glass gravel etc so make sure the person knows what they are doing

good luck

fishboy747 wrote:


LOL
well my dad knows what hes doing, and he probably could build me a stand...but then i would ahve to wait until i turned 30 before i got it heheheheheh procastinator he is...and very easily distracted. he has about a billion projects running at a time.

OFL wrote:


hehehe
yes i was looking at complete setups
i thought they might be easier and i like the look of them...but if the filtration is poo then i wont bother. i'll have a look at other places and see what they are running, and what else i like the look of...

Instead of looking at new set ups, look at Craigslist. Or the classifieds in your area. You can often pick up nice, big tanks CHEAP.

Nickisue wrote:



i have
there isnt much around my area...
lots of things interstate, but not my area.
and the ones that are close by?
all look dodgy.

Very strange that tanks of that size have trickle filters.

Down here all the manufactured all-in-one tanks that I have seen for that capacity generally have Canister Filters, or in many cases built-in sump filters.