Home for our growing population of fish (Hagen Fluval Roma 90 Aquarium & Cabinet)

Member Name: azana

Product:	Hagen Fluval Roma 90 Aquarium & Cabinet
Date:	21/05/09 (244 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Looks good

Disadvantages: no hidden filtration/heating

This tank is what I bought as a starter aquarium, and represents my first foray into fishkeeping. It is a 90 litre tank, which is 60 cm wide and 50 cm high. There are also 127 litres and up versions available.

Reasons for purchase and what you get:

If you looking into starting fishkeeping this is probably a good size to start with, and this particular aquarium has a cabinet that came with it, I paid £178 for both. The cabinet is in self assembly form, and the tank can be used for coldwater or tropical fish.

The fluval set was supplied with a number of accessories to get you started:

Roma 90 - Fluval 2 Internal Filter
Tronic Heater 100watt
Fluval GLO lighting: 1x15 watt PowerGlo & 1x15 watt AquaGlo lighting tubes
LCD thermometer (stick on)
100ml Nutrafin Aqua Plus & Cycle (removes chlorine from water and kickstarts the cycling of the tank)
26g Nutrafin Tropical Flake food

There was also a handy and straightforward guide to setting everything up, including advice on adding substrate and plants.

Setting it up:

The set came in one box - one not obvious thing to be wary of is getting the tank out of the box, we lifted it out by its edges, only to read in the guide later that this could have put stress on the joins (this is a silicon sealed tank) and that we should have cut the box down around it - I would think that you should do this, but it wasn't clear as the instructions weren't necessarily something you would get out first.

Assembly of the cabinet was fairly straightforward - the finish is oak veneer and the doors have no handle but open by being pressed. There is one shelf inside and we followed the instructions very carefully and with the supplied alun key and experience of ikea flat packs we were able to manage it.

The doors are double sided and so you can choose to have a darker panel on them to match your decor which is a nice touch, overall once assembled this is a nice looking cabinet which blends in well to our decor, the optional oak strips for the aquarium lid surround are a nice touch too. Aesthetically to me the cabinet is pleasing.

For some reason our cabinet came with the wrong sized shelf - this had us puzzled for a while, but was exchanged by our retailer. There is a parts guarantee for the aquarium that must be sent off to the manufacturer.

We angled the heater at 45 degrees to set it up as a tropical tank - the temperature dial on the heater is easy to adjust as it is in dial form.
The filter can be adjusted to bubble and various speeds and came with various filters including the carbon sort. You must be sure not to switch either the heater or filter on before water is added - if you are new to fishkeeping you may not know this. The instruction booklet did break the setting up steps down nicely and was easy to follow.

The aquarium is not one with bowed edges like some aquariums you can buy, and does have sealed edges with 10mm thick glass, but to me it is still pleasing to the eye. The filters and heater are not hidden as they are on some tanks by other manufacturers, but this doesn't really worry me but may be a factor in your choice of tank.

This is a mid range aquarium, and the more expensive Hagen home tank did look a lot nicer, but for a first tank this has proved to be quite a good choice for us.

In use:

So far our fish once installed in the cycled tank have been doing well and the plants have flourished with the addition of a CO2 unit. The lights seem to be bright enough, and the filter is reliable so far. We did find that we weren't sure of the accuracy of the stick on thermometer so upgraded this for a couple of pounds. The fish are obviously happy as they seem to reproducing rather a lot!

Access to the aquarium is not as good as it seems to be on other brands I have seen - and this is my one criticism. The lid is in three bits, one lifts off easily enough to feed the fish, but if you want to clean or anything else you do have to lift out the middle section which has the lights attached to it and this is a bit of a pain really.

The doors on the cabinet work well and so far no problems with leaks or anything - though I have read that this has been an issue with older tanks of this model.

There is no noticeable humming or noise from the tank, which was something we had wondered about, and like I said it sits nicely in our living room, in a more shaded from light spot, which is probably advisable for avoiding more vigorous algae growth.

Overall:

Overall I am pleased with the tank, for us it was good that everything came in a set and it eased us into the hobby. Of course we do now wish we had bought the next size up, probably like many people who get into the hobby, so if you are new to fishkeeping I would investigate the 127 litre model also.

Should we continue with the fishkeeping hobby past the first year - which is looking more and more likely as we have really enjoyed owning this tank for the last few months, we no doubt will upgrade at some point or acquire other tanks, but this has been a great tank to start out with.



Footnote: If starting fishkeeping I think it is generally agreed that you should make sure you read up on the requirements of fish and an aquarium extensively, so do this before purchasing any tank.

Summary: a great starter tank