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My first ever aquarium. Juwel Rio 180l

Also just bought an Otterbox preserver case for my phone in prep for holiday by the beach and recording the girls body boarding in the sea. Thought I would test it out. First video was little shaky. I attached the phone to my daughters ruler with an elastic band and then lowered the phone into the tank. Next time I will slow down and move back from the fish. But you get the idea.


 
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Have two incidents to report. One amusing one slightly less so.
This first one is related to the iPhone case I tested in the fish tank.
I promptly took it on holiday put the phone in it and had been using it for 3 days into the holiday.
Until one night after requesting my phone to be unplugged from the speaker in the holiday appartment and handed to me down at the pool where I was supervising the kids. I forgot to push the cap protectors in over the charger and headphone socket and promptly threw the phone into the pool for the kids to take some videos with. Within 1 min they handed it back citing it was no longer working, just in time for me to see the screen waterlogged and the display flicker and fade to black. 3 days of the phone in a bag of rice did not work and in the end I had to get a new one couriered to me. Thankfully I had enough wine to dull the senses and shock of killing my phone when it happened.

The second incident. I return from holiday to clean the tank out and do my 40-50% water change, I find a dead platy. ;-( Ok. Not good, but only one I was thankful for no more.
When I go to switch on the power to everything, I find the internal filter not working. Hmmmm Surely 2 years is not going to kill it. But who knows. Right now I am on the clock and I need to get it sorted otherwise the fish are going to suffer.
I make my excuses and dash down to the semi LFS to grab a new replacement Juwel Powerhead. To my amazement when the shop assistant reveals that perhaps I should look at taking the powerhead apart and clean it rather than buy another. I was stunned. 1 I did not know you could do that. 2 I was appreciative that he offered the advice. As I was about to push to buy an Eheim 340T on a credit card and rip the internal filter out all together. I still think my 3200 l/h powerhead is a bit too much for the fish to swim against.

I did however buy some new Juwel T5 lights as he advised that 2 years was a long wait to replace them. So I made a slight adjustment, I got the daylight bulb and a bulb which has a pinkish hue supposedly to help show the fish. This was instead of a white light. Said it would not really impact the plants that much. Hmmmmm

Got home (fast) and took the powerhead apart and low and behold it is caked in dark limescale type grime, which is a bugger to shift. Managed to brush off most, and it leapt back into action. Phew.

I did my weekly water change and clean and the powerhead seems to be fine. frogbit is certainly growing lots. Fish are all happy.

So question
180l tank, If I ever was to replace the internal filter, what size ehiem Pro 3 should I get. Surely not the 1200XLT? Which has the rating of 1700l/h as the 350T is rated at 1050l/h?
Answers on a postcard.
TIA
Cheers
R
 
Sorry to hear about the phone! I bet you don't do that again though! :)

Nice to hear the assistant advised you on cleaning the powerhead. Juwel power heads do have a habit of failing after a couple of years (not sure about the newer Eco models) so it would be well worth purchasing one as a spare. I had a powerhead fail in my Rio 125 but fortunately I had a spare to hand.

Shame they mugged you afterwards with new bulbs. :D

Did you keep the old bulbs? You can save them as spares. You don't really need to replace them unless they fail. The shop and manufacturer would like you too though to help them with their profit margin. The colour temp is also not an issue, just pick which ones you like.

In terms of filtration it is typically recommended to aim for a quoted turnover of 10x the tank volume so the 1700lph seems about right. The actual flow will be much less. If it does turn out to be too much then you can restrict the flow.
 
Hi Andy
Thanks for the ideas.
No I did get rid of the old bulbs. I might be my imagination but the new bulbs do seem brighter. But then it might be the different colour bulb.
Cheers for confirmation of the x10 flow. Seems mad that I would need a top of the range eheim to get the right flow. But hey ho.
Cheers
R
 
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