ZebraPleco.com • The complete Hypancistrus zebra resource

Hi all,

It's my first time post but have read every single post on the forum, so hopefully I won't be asking any questions that have already been answered!

I have 6 young zebras (approx 12 month old) on order. I have a cycled Juwel Rio 300 setup and will be putting just the zebs and maybe a handful of cardinals in the tank.

At the moment it has the internal juwel filter with a 1000lph powerhead plus an Eheim 2329 wet dry thermofilter at 550lph stated throughput (the builtin heater is run alongside the internal Juwel one for redundancy).

I run an online aquatics shop so have access to the full Eheim range cheap and was interested in opinions as to what, if any, additional filtration I should add in a money no object situation. The 2329 is great at biofiltration and adds well oxygenated water BUT as it's a "breathing filter" it doesn't have a constant flow (they output for a minute then stop for a minute) plus it does not perform mechanical/chemical filtration at all.

I was thinking, in order to increase flow rate and provide mechanical/chemical filtration, of adding an Eheim Ecco. My reasoning is that they are easy to open/prime so I could stuff it with floss to polish the water which I could swap out regularly without having to mess about too much. Alternatively I could add any other Eheim external, aquaball, or powerhead including Eheim hobby pumps.

Sorry it's such a long post just wanted to give enough details for people to be able to give an opinion.

Thanks in advance for any comments. Will probably post pics of my setup later in the week for comments.

Zebras nead high amounts of oxygen so the 2329 is a good choice, also if you plan to breed id keep them as specie tank. Welcome to ZP!

Thanks for the reply zebraman, glad to be here it's a great resource!

That was my thinking with the 2329 given that filter bacteria take a lot of oxygen out of the water- efficient biological filtration can result in depleted o2 levels (you see it with sumps sometimes with high stocking).

I've read the posts about them being rheophilic, and am not sure there's enough turnover. The Juwel is a fairly slow filter (which people use in planted tanks a lot so co2 isn't driven out...) and the 2329 isn't creating any flow half the time when it stops pumping to "breathe".

Am still dithering about the ditherfish also I do hope to breed them when they mature and am getting two unrelated groups, but that will be a while off and the dithers seem to help them settle from what I gather? Cardinals should also look nice with the slate backdrop and help my girlfriend come to terms with the expense

Following the flood of responses about optimal filtration (pun intended) I've just done what I think best j/k

I added the ecco for mechanical filtration but still wasn't happy with the flow rate so have added a compact 1000 powerhead as well.

The DO looked high enough before the powerhead went in. A couple of different test kits show results as high as can be expected for the temp so with the powerhead should be about perfect for flow and DO.

I'll post pictures in a new post when I've completed the decor to see if anybody can suggest improvements.