Tyler B

I'll look into doing this, but what purpose would the air stone by itself serve? Just oxygenate the water and move waste around? Thanks for the help, thats a relief. Would it be worth it to have another sponge filter in this sized tank? I can go for an air stone on the other side for now. Ultimately I guess it comes down to me monitoring to make sure nitrates don't go too high between water changes. Thanks!

Hey everyone, I have a 20G tank with the medium sponge filter and it is going well. I got the Tetra 40G air pump because it seemed like it would have enough flow rate, but I found it pumps 1.3 Liter/min which only comes out to ~21 Gal/hour. I've seen that at least 4 times turnover is recommended, so it seems I am way under where you want to be if that's a good metric. I guess they are not rated for standalone filtration. The tank is what I would call decently planted at this point in time My planned stocking in case it's relevant is: 8-10 ember tetras 8-10 neon green rasbora (or similar nano fish, not 100% sure yet) 1-3 honey gourami (only 1 left when I got it and it seems like you can keep them alone? I could also take it back in case the filtration is not ideal) 5 kuhli loach cherry shrimp misc. snails AQ Advisor shows me that the stocking level is ~100% but the filtration capacity is what is worrying me. I'd probably be changing ~25% water per week. I was just wondering what amount of turnover you use with your sponge filters so I can get a better idea.