question for large tank owners

[audioslave_36]

I'm just curious, my 55g tank has become pretty self suficient. mid next week I will be setting up my "project" 220g tank to switch all my current fish over to. After I do partial water transfer from my 55 to my 220 and let my 220 run for a while before I move all my not so little friends. Will I be in for 4 times the work every week since I will now have 4 times the tank ?  Or a big tanks easy to care for ?

[babblefish1960]

You will find that by and large, the greater the volume of water to a point, the more forgiving they are as pertains to shifts in water parameters such as pH, temperature and so on. Insofar as doing work in the tank, you will have more glass to clean, more water to change, and more bulbs and larger filtration to maintain. On the other hand, you can go away on holiday for two weeks and not worry as nothing will change much if you don't feed the fish, everything should be fine when you return.

Smaller tanks are very useful, however, they do require an inverse proportion of work relative to their size as compared to the much larger tanks such as what you have pending setting up.

Good luck, and for goodness sake, make certain that your stand can withstand racking forces in all directions, and make certain the stand is perfectly level and square in all three planes prior to even putting the tank on it. Have fun with that project.

[audioslave_36]

Wow, that sums it up all in one reply 

Thank you babblefish1960

Dave

[audioslave_36]

I have another question,  I have bought two new 300 watt heaters for my 220g tank.  will that be adequate ? 

[beowulf]

I have another question,  I have bought two new 300 watt heaters for my 220g tank.  will that be adequate ? 

It really depends on the ambiant temp in the room and how warm you want the tank.  The closer those two numbers are the better for you.

[babblefish1960]

There are calculators for heaters, depending upon the school of thought, you will either have too many, or not enough.

I'll explain. There are some who believe that one heater should never be large enough to overheat a tank, which is to say, when they were prone to getting stuck in the "on" position, small tanks would get incredibly hot. So in defence of this circumstance, the heaters were always doubled up and undersized, so that if one were stuck, the fish would still be okay.

There are others still who believe that the way to prevent the heater from getting worn out soon and sticking "on", was to over size the heater so that when it was working, it was only cruising, so the heater wouldn't wear out.

Then there are proponents also of even heated water in larger aquariums such as yours, having heaters at opposite ends of the tank seems to be a good idea, the fish will let you know what they like.

The most important question regarding the size of heaters, and some good calculators offer figures for this, is what is the temperature difference of the ambient room temperature relative to the desired water temperature of the aquarium.

In short, I haven't answered your question, only given you more questions, but I might suggest, without more detailed information, that yes, a pair of 300 watt heaters should suffice, depending of course upon your particular situation.

[audioslave_36]

OK thanks you guys, I am running two heats in my 55g tank right now and I have not had any issues at all, so I was pretty sure the two 300w heaters were gonna work for me, but in the seventeen years that I have had fish in my life I have found that there is always room for help, knowledge and opinions

thanks once again

Dave