Hello to all, my name is Brian, i live in Tenerife (Canary Islands). I´ve been in the marine-reef hobby for nearly 10 years. And now im gonna jump to "sweet" waters .

I have a 157 UK gallons tank with an overflow built in the tank. Tank dimensions are 170 cm long 70 cm width and 60 cm tall = 714 liters of water.

I need your experience and help with this project. This tank will only have one o two pieces of drifwood and no substrat as decoration. I would like a pair of tiger or red oscars with a few tankmates (ej. Ancistrus, pictus catfish and Hero Severum).

I have a 210 liter sump, but im alble to get a Eheim Prof 3 canister filter.

Well i need your help with the tankmates ive mentiond above and how many of each and what do you think about the Eheim Prof 3 canister filter for this tank and fish.

Thanks,
Brian

Tenerife- i have had a couple of good holidays there but back to bussiness

157 gallons is a good sized tank, enough for 2 oscars and some tankmates, you will ok with the sev and some pictus- not sure on the other fish- whats its common name

I dont know much about sumps but it should be enough to filter your tank but it wont hurt to put the Eheim on it as well

Please read the section on cycling on the site please and post any questions you have (although you probably know about this)

Thanks delboybully for your quick reply !!

The other fish, i think you may commonly know it as a bristlenosed catfish. Think of it for algae issues.

Do you think that the Eheim Prof 3 by itself can do the filtering job ??

Its still not cycling, just finished selling out all the salty things, although i will take a look at the cycling section.

Will take some pics tommorow of the tank and DIY stand.

I was looking up information at Eheims homepage on the Profesional 3 canister filter, and it seems like the big one only is rated only for 700 liters !!

What do you guys think, should i move on to a Fluval fx5 ???

(Maybe sale and get a good extra €€€€ for the sump)

The fX5 is rated for up to a 400 gallon tank... i love mine. great filter, and you can't go wrong

personaly i think your best option would be to run your sump in conjunction with either and fx5 or a eheim 3 pro. this will be more than adequate to handle the bio load and mechanical aspects of your tank.

remember the one thing you cannot do is overfilter and oscar tank.

best of luck with your new endeavour

iv housed all of the fish you have mentioned (all be it gold and green severums not hero ones) with oscars before with no problems at all bar the occasional bully session when the oscars were smaller. good fish choice

mine are all seperated at present though as im trying to breed my oscars,, trying being the word

Well here is a few pics of what it used to be ... and how its at this moment !!

Before ...








And some update details of the tank ...












Im still not sure on the filtering system im gonna use .... a question for all you experts .....

Can i only use the sump for filtering with no canister filters ?
Will it be enough ?

Cheers,
Brian

your sump should be more than adequate on its own for an oscar tank

Sweet set up!
I'm not into saltwater, but you seem to got that going pretty well!
I only use a sump on my big tank and it's more than sufficient.
But i use a prefilter in my overflow chamber.

Noddy, i suppose i must take of the durso pipe i have in my overflow box, what kind of prefilter material are you using in your overflow ?

Yes i think that my sump will be goog enough, getting a good canister filter will surely blow my wallet €€€€ €€€€.

because you already have the sump i would use it by itself. If you wanted to add the Etheim later you could. If you set the sump up with good floss/sponge as the mechanical media you should have easy access to it and make cleaning it easy. if you do this wkly it will help lower nitrates cos you will remove waste before it brakes down. the other option is to use the sump as the main bio and the canister as a mechanical filter. the Etheim is a good filter but if you can manage without it and don't have the extra cash, then the sump is the answer. your setup is looking good.