When is it too much filteration?

[BearsDen]

I am fairly new to the Salt water thing.
I have a 55 gallon and its currently running on a 330 biowheel fiteration, I just purchased a penguin 170 biowheel to add to it.

My question is will it be too much filteration?

 

[Somonas]

well if saltwater is like freshwater there can never be too much filtration.

 

[steakaphagus]

I've heard that too, but let's say, hypothetically, that you had 10 external filters on a 10g tank(ignore the fact that it would be more flow than a jacuzzi) - Would the bacterial colonies still be sustained, or would there be too much competition leading to a few colonies thriving whilst other filter colonies died off?

 

[TaffyFish]

Biological filtration - there could only be a level of bacteria that could be sustained, they rise to the nutrient level and that's it.

Mechanical filtration - the filter can only remove what's present, filtering clean water achieves nothing

Chemical filtration - as mechanical, it cannot remove what isn't there.

Two filters offer a level of redundancy that's worth having, 10 filters would see the back end effects from the law of diminishing returns! It's likely you'd have reached the point where bacteria colonies were so low in each filter so they could barely be considered cycled when stood alone.

 

[wayne]

No you can't have too much filtration.

I doubt you even have much water flow. I'm moving something like 450 gallons an hour now on a 30 , and it's not excessive. I've been in mortal danger diving, and never felt like that with my arm in a tank.

 

[Vumeter]

The only time when it's too much is if you have a filter feeder like bamboo shrimp. Then the mechanical filtration removes too much water borne food like algae. Then the bamboo shrimp starves to death if it won't accept any other food. I've found this out the hard way.

 

[jclif1995]

i believe you can have too much filtration. i think the goal is getting the best balance for your situation. in my tropical tank, i run a Fluval 304. there are about 12 schooling fish, two dwarf gouramis, two moonlight gouramis, two clown loaches, three snails, and maybe something else i've forgotten. the tank is 40 gals. this is the only filter and it keeps the tank in beautiful balance. matched with UV the water is so clear the fish appear as if they are floating in air.

switch gears. my goldie tank. 46gal. three fancies, 1 Lionhead, 1 Oranda, 1 Ranchu. Filtration includes an Emperor 280 and a Fluval 304. I have not been at all pleased with this particular combination and switched the Fluval to a Eheim 2026 last night. I'm expecting better results with the increased media capacity.

if i were to add more filtration, it would be an undergravel filter but it really isn't necessary.

 

[chris2992]

the more filtration you have, the more current you have in the tank. your selection of fish need to withstandthe ammount of current you are going to provide with filtratation. freshwater standard is 10x's the gallons of the tank turnover. so a 55 gallon tank would need 550 gph filtration. and im not good with sw but i think it is 15x's the gallons. this is just a rule of thumb to get you started, but mainly it is up to personal preference, fish selection and in your case coral selection.
chris