I have a 90 Gal Tank

Fish:
2 6" Red Oscars
5" Green Terror
16" Leopard Pleco
7 1/2" Male JD

(Im thinking Im a little over stocked)

I am thinking of changing from my Penguin 350/Penguin 200 to a dual canister setup. Any Suggestions?

Also the glass on my tank is cloudy. ( Not the water ) I have been told its potassium build up on the tank. Help?

You should upgrade to a tank twice your curent size 150-180 gal with some good canisters. Seriously you will never keep up with water condtions in a tank that small with those fish.
Good luck

first thing your going to need is a bigger tank. if you plan on keeping all your present fish then i would recommend a 180 gallon. along with that you will need filtration to go along with it. something like a fluval fx5 would be a good start. also let me recommend a water testing kit. not the test strips but something with a liquid reagent. american pharmaceutical makes a good master test kit that is easy to read and use.

as for the buildup on the inside of your glass the only thng i can think of is good old fashion scrubbing. ofter that try to find out if you tap water is high in potassium and if it is then maybe there may be something on the market to help in keeping it in check.

hope some of this is helpfull to you........

I have a master test kit and I test about every 3 days. I havnt had a problem keeping up with water changes since I gravel vaccum once a week. If I can maintain my levels is there a problem with how many fish I have?

As for the glass I have scrubbed my brains out and even taken a razor blade to it with no luck.

each fish in your stock list will likely hit at least 12 inches in lenght when they are mature. some will grow even bigger.
now try to imagine what your tank will look like with 5 large fish in it. we usually recommend at least a 100 gallon tank for 2 oscars. now when you add the rest it is easy to see that you will be massively overstocked. the bio load alone will become to much to handle and the nitrate will rise at an alarming rate.
not to mention the aggression you will encounter from gt and the jack. and if your oscars turn out to be both males, well there really is nowhere to hide in a four foot long tank.

You got a point there I guess Ill have to cross that road in a few months. If I got rid of the GT would the 4 that are left be ok?

we usually recommend at least a 100 gallon tank for 2 oscars no tankmates.

oscars are by far the messiest fish that you could have chosen to keep. because of this they put huge loads on the bio and nitrates in your tank. this is the main reason that large tanks or should i say large volumes of water are needed. it is to dilute this and keep water changes manageble. when you add a fish such as a pleco to the mix, who are notorius for the 20 inch long shoelace turds water quality become a problem very quickly.

if you are to keep 2 oscars and only one tankmate you will find that you will be needing a tank that is at least 125 gallons.

Ok thanks for the advice. I wonder the person who had the tan before me had the JD and the pleco, and they were in horrible conditions I dont know how they survived. Would that have anything to do with why my 15 y/o pleco is only 16" long?

JamesS wrote:

Definately, a common should be fullgrown at 15 years, thus reaching 1,5 foot at least.
15 years is an achievement, though .

How he got there I dont really know the tank when I had gotten it hadnt been cleaned in over a year. A YEAR!