One of the key parts of keeping any tropical fish is the filtration you use and although Malawi Cichlids are very hardy and can generally stand a range of water parameters, it is always best to give them the best environment possible. Malawi Cichlids also tend to be aggressive and although the Aulonocara we plan on keeping in this tank are quite timid, it is still advisable to overstock them so over filtration is an absolute must.
The tank that we are using is a Fluval Roma 240 which is 240 litres. We wanted to be sure that we are as safe as possible so running 2 filters is of great importance and each filter must be more than capable of filtering our tank on it’s own, just in case one of them failed. It was decided upon to use the Fluval 405 filters as these are rated for aquariums up to 400 litres so with 2 of these we are hitting 800 litres which is over 3 times the size of our aquarium and should one fail, we are still over filtering the tank.
The Fluval 405 filters come with 4 media baskets as well as the foam inserts. To cover off all required filtration we wanted to use the appropriate media and have found in the past that the media which offers the largest surface area (to enable the most growth of beneficial bacteria) is the Micromec by JBL. So we will fill all 4 baskets in both filters with this media and allow any larger waste to be picked up by the foams.
For further information on what equipment we used and final fish and aquascape check out the article dedicated to this aquarium and it’s history.
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