My .02,
First... I want to say welcome to the club! It's a great place to meet others in the area, who also enjoy this hobby.
Secondly, I'll second Reef'd up and say that we all have to start somewhere and we've all made mistakes along the way. That being said, there are lots of ways to be successful in this hobby. As long as you understand the pro's and con's of the different methods, and are making informed decisions, you'll do fine.
In my experience HOB (hang on back) filters like your Whispers are not ideal, but "can" be made to work, provided you change out the filter/carbon pads on a regular basis... I ran smaller versions of these types of filters on my 1st 2 systems, and found that they worked best when I changed the filter/carbon pads on a weekly basis, when I did my water change. My water parameters were stable, and my tank was doing fine, but over time, I decided that it would be more cost effective to move in a different direction.
When/if you decide to make a change, I'd recommend replacing the HOB filters with a sump/skimmer setup and a few PH's (powerheads). The powerheads will provide the flow (turnover) that you need to keep detritus suspended in the water column until it can be filtered from the system and a sump is a great place to place your heater and skimmer. Alternatively, you could add a HOB skimmer and bypass the sump setup.
As long as you have sufficient flow and a nutrient export process (filtration, skimming, water change, etc), it should be pretty easy to maintain the setup that you have. Keep up on the weekly water changes... as these are going to be very very important with your current setup.
Good luck and enjoy!
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