As some of you might know, I have recently acquired a 135 US gallon tank. I have a few questions about setup.

I need 300w worth of heater. It/they will be titanium. Should I go with (1) 300w or (2) 150w heaters?
I really want to do an amazon biotope with lots, if not all live plants. If I do this I have to use sand and can't use an undergravel filter. Since I have so many fish (mostly plecos, a.k.a. poo factories) I am debating the filtration setup. I want to do (2) magnum 350's, (2) emperor 400's and 3 powerhead 50's. Should I do an undergravel filter with the powerheads (no sand) or do the quick filters(

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) on the powerheads with sand?

I'd always opt for the 2 150w heaters because you instantly halve the effect of any failure from one of them. The filters I'm not 100% sure on because the the brands your saying aren't exactly UK mainstream even though I ownded a Magnum external years ago. I'd also leave the filtration advice to the plant growers on the boards because I'm sure half my plant tanks fail becuase I always overfilter . If it was my tank I'd filter it with a couple of nice Eheim externals though.

I agree with Monkeh on several points. The first being, 'I don't know those brands!'.

Live PLants? = No Undergravel Filtration ! End of story. And a bit of muck in the gravel is great plant food.

Spliting the heating is a good disaster prevention tactic, if slightly more expensive.

Sand? No experiance, except for Vines, Stone Fruit, and getting the Tractor Bogged! We have some really fine grained gravel here. It's not sand (I'm imagining beach sand here), it's several times the size of a sand grain. But it's way smaller than gravel. Best description I can give - sorry. And it's more expensive than either. It comes colored! But I'd imagine less of it would end up in your filter.

Ehiems - I love 'em! Go for an external cannister. You can set your filter inlet at say, half tank height. That should keep the sand out. If you want current from powerheads, same trick, take the water from up high. You can pipe to where-ever you want movement.

It's great stuff setting up a new tank !

go for 2 heaters much better as has been stated by both kana & monkeh also not sure about the fillters but as kana has pointed out undergravel & plants do not go together but with the amount of L numbers you have i would be tempted to go with an external filter set up that you can put your heaters in stops your cats lying on them & getting burnt have you thought about a sump filter ?
sand is your best option with the amount of L numbers you have i have sand in all my tanks because of my catfish if you decide to go with sand the cheepest way is to buy play pit sand
plants i side with monkeh dont know to much about plants as i tend not to have many with most of my cats just loads of bogwood

Re: Heaters. Clunkster mentions burning. I'm now a Sera fanatic. I don't know if you have them locally, but Fish Guards are now included as standard. They are really good quality, robust guards. So you can leave the heater in the tank.

Here's a link.

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Fishy's probaly the one to suggest plants, but I'd recommend the classic Amazon Sword. Seems to be a favourite with Catfish, and the wide flat surface allows for 'grazing'.

heater guards do not allways protect the fish but is better than nothing

I'm a bit wary of heater guards myself with plecs, though that might be because my only experiences with them was the algarde one which is loose enough to let smaller plecs in and they use it like a small cave, which has killed one bn of mine in the past. It worked well in my marine tank though and kept my anemone and seacumumber off the element. For future tanks I'm looking at the hydor external heaters or thinking of putting a sump under to keep this stuff out the tank altogether.

2 heaters - good, for above reasons.

no under gravel filter with plants, for above reasons.

i use sand a lot, but for rooted plants u may need to mix a bit of gravel with it as the sand can compact a bit and isnt good for rooted pants. i use 'play sand' from garden centes as it's cheep, lol. it needs a bit of rinsing in a bucket 1st to get rid of the fine stuff and u may get a bit of clouding in the water initialy but it goes quickly and isnt harmful to fish, from my experience.

instead of 'muck' u can use fertaliser tablets (broken into 4 if they're big ones). i find this works for me fine and save the mess and hassle of other methods.

plecos are messy, i know. to help deal with this, i'd slope sand or gravel from back to front to aide cleaning and i would suggest a current that helps to move dirt towards the filter inlet/s.

my bristle noses love to clean leaves of plants. big leafed plants like java fern and amazon swords are their favs. althought it can be funny to watch them trying to clean the leaves of vallis untill it falls over due to their weight.

my BN's clean my heaters but seem smart enough to know to keep away when the heater is on. so i dont worry about heater guards.

good luck, and dont forget to let us all know how it goes.

The Sera Heater Guards are quite a solid hunk of plastic. They slide up over the Heater, from the bottom. And they lock-on rather well, it's almost difficult to get them off. I can't see any fish getting through one (except small Fry).

This is no cheap Asian knock-off. This is precision German craftmanship, this!

ok, so 2 heaters, sand with some gravel mixed in, 2 magnum 350's, 2 emperor 400's, no UG filter. The reason I'm going with magnums is I already have one on the 50 gallon and I can put it on the 135 with another and keep the emperor 400 on the 50 gallon.

I have never had a problem with my plecs burning themselves on the heater. I don't think I will need heater guards.

How much sand should I get? 50 lbs., 100 lbs., 200 lbs., as many lbs. as there is water capacity? i.e. 135 gallon-135 lbs. of sand?

With sand I've found as little as you need to cover the glass works best so buy a couple of bags (they're around £2 for 15kg in the UK for playpit sand) and add as required. Be wary of standing wood and rocks on it as well, its a very fluid base when it wants to be and plecs love digging round in it especially near decorations so base them on the glass bottom if you can. If you go too deep with sand and it compacts and turns anaerobic its possible for black spots to develop which releases hydrogen suphide bubbles in the tank, which stinks the room out (think stink bombs or rotten eggs) as a best case, at worst it kills your livestock.

Since your in the US theres also some rather nice inert coloured sands available if you shop around, and you might want to check that out as well because play sand is very bright - not that my own BN's seemed that bothered apart from changing to a lighter camouflage pattern on it.

When I was selecting my last lot of gravel, there were two colors to choose from (mind you there was some variation within the bag). Generally there was a sort of reddy type, and then there was black.

I think I went two parts black, and 1 part red, ended up with that sort of browny / yellowy /gold that you see in my pics. Not bad, I think.

So mixing colors is an option.

If you're growing plants, I'm afraid you'll need more than Monkeh's 'cover the glass'.

This is fiddly, but could be interesting. Silicon in a 1-2 inch high perspex wall across the base of your tank. Have deep gravel, and plant your plants behind the wall (on the high ground), and have your Pleco sand-pit at the front. Silicon a few bits of wood in front of the wall, so it's pleasing to the eye.

i agree with Kana (for a change ) and think the 2 level thing is a great idea.

The cover the glass bit only applies to the sand, for gravel make it as deep as you need it .

funky if your using sand no more than an inch deep or as fishpaw has pointed out you will end up with problems but your plecs will love it