450Litre filtration setup - ideas?

[Amelie]

I have just purchased a 450L bowfront tank to house my existing discus and add a few more. The final tank will be BB with a medium size piece of spiderwood and 11 adult discus (right now I have six ranging from 7 to 13cm). I do not have the ability to set up a sump so I will have to use canister filters, and this is where I am having a hard time deciding. I am looking at the Eheim Pro or Classic but am unsure whether I should get one large filter (and a wavemaker?) or two smaller ones. I currently have my grow out tank that is 160L and I use a Fluval and a UV light and the light can be used on tanks up to 120 gallons so I thought of transferring it over to the new tank too. The Fluval would become my backup in case something fails (also because I have to use an alternator on it. I moved from the US to the UK and brought my tank accessories with me). I am still not 100% satisfied with the water being crystal clear though (it's nearly there) but that is a separate issue I will have to address after I even figure out what filtration system to use on the new tank. I wanted to use a pre filter on the intake-s and currently use Purigen and chemipure elite (which I would continue using - water parameters are good). Besides that I am doing more research but also wanted to hear what people with a lot more experience than me are doing Thank you for any feedback and help!

[Phillydubs]

Are you opposed to an hob?

[Amelie]

I have a Juwel Vision and I like the clean lines it has and would prefer to avoid hob - unless it carries a major benefit that I would not achieve with the canister filters. I have some airstones that I could use too to break the water surface although I am not a huge fan of them (they can be a bit noisy).

[Willie]

I would be in favor of having two smaller filters, so that one is always backing up the other one. It's the same approach I take with heaters, pumps, etc.

Willie

[Amelie]

Thank you for your response, Willie. Would you have two filters match their setup or have one dedicated mostly to mechanical and one mostly biological?

[Willie]

In my 110 gal tank for altum angels, rams and corydoras cats, I run two double stacked sponge filters and a Fluval 406. The tank is bare bottomed and just has one large, highly branched, drift wood.

The biological filtration is handled by the sponges, while the Fluval handles the mechanical filtration. I understand some people do not like the look of sponge filters, so they may go a different route. I change 50% of the water daily when I'm home so the mechanical filtration portion is not as important. I rely on the Fluval mainly to take fine particles out of the water.

My plan is to add a wave maker soon. Even with this amount of filtration, the tank definitely have dead spots.

Willie

[Amelie]

Thank you Willie - I will look into including a wave maker to improve the water movement and am going to use two eheim 2215 with pre-filters (fluval is my back up). Not sure if I will integrate the sponge filters but will see how the biological filtration does since I travel about once a month for 5 days at a time so I need to make sure that the tank can handle it with no water changes during those days and the existing filtration (I have a sitter that comes every day to feed the fish and remove solid waste from the tank but no water changes). Thanks again!