RDFISHGUY Posted December 16, 2005 Report Share Posted December 16, 2005 I don't know if anyone else has ever experienced this or not but I thought i'd share it so it doesn't happen to someone else. I recently had an Xp3 filter that lost its prime. I'd done a water change that morning but I never noticed the if the sprayer bar was working or not as I was moving some other fish around. When I got back from shopping the filter was making some noise so I reprimed it . Within an hour all my fish were gasping for air.I checked the nitrates ,ammonia , and nitrites .Nitrites were quite high.I did a water change and fish began to act normal again even showing spawning behavior. I thought it was cool.The next mornig a pleco was the only fish out of about twenty in the tank still alive. Among the dead were 5 WC phenochilus and three other breeding groups. The moral of the story is don't restart a filter if you don't know how long its been down. I suspect the detritus left in the filter poisoned the fish as it rotted when there was no flow. I hope this will help someone else to avoid this catastrophe. See you soon Albert.Time to start over ,Ryan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dunl Posted December 16, 2005 Report Share Posted December 16, 2005 Rotten luck, man. That really bites, and just in time for Christmas too. Sorry to hear, Ryan. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RD. Posted December 16, 2005 Report Share Posted December 16, 2005 Hey Ryan, that's a hard lesson to learn, and I knew that you'd eventually post here to help save someone else this misfortune down the road. Once again, sorry to hear about your fish, but I know that your tank will be back up & looking better than ever in the very near future. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cgmac Posted December 16, 2005 Report Share Posted December 16, 2005 Okay here's a newb question everyone! If this happened to me, and I chose not to restart the filter, would my solution to the problem be finding some different media for the filter? Or am I looking to just clean out the filter and restart? Sorry to hear of your fish losses and thanks for posting the experience. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RD. Posted December 16, 2005 Report Share Posted December 16, 2005 When a filter stops running, over time you'll have an anaerobic condition, and the bacteria will begin to die off, with the end result being a build up of various toxins. It's always a good idea to take all media out, rinse it well in dechlorinated tap water, rinse the filter chamber as well, then place your media back in your filter, and start it up. The longer a filter sits under these conditions, and the dirtier that filter is, the more deadly the conditions can become. HTH Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wandj Posted December 16, 2005 Report Share Posted December 16, 2005 I am running a combo of XP2s and XP3s. I have 4 of them running right now, and I will tell you something I found common with them. I have hard water, and I notice that once I turn the filter off, sometimes the propellor won't turn back on and it just hums. I sometimes have to take a kitchen razor blade and scrape off the magnet. What works better, is soak the propellor/magnet in CLR or something, and pour some in the housing. Of course, make sure you rinse well. Calcium deposits will sometime stop your propellor from turning once it has been turned off. ALSO, here is another scenario....if I let my wc on my Discus tank go more than 30%, my XP2 filter will start stop working because I have a Fluval skimmer on the intake and it will start sucking air. So then I have to open the little cap and pour water down the intake so it gets rid of the air when I want to start it again. (Hey, I am doing a wc on that tank right now and it did it again, I'll have to restart it) So Rena owners, take heed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vallisneria Posted December 16, 2005 Report Share Posted December 16, 2005 Sorry to hear that I had problems with my Aquaclears not turning back on after power outages. MIne have never been able to self prime and will run dry untill i found them and filled them up with water. Not as serious as your malfunction but still not fun. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Big Red 265. Posted December 16, 2005 Report Share Posted December 16, 2005 Just another word on filters that stop working. I have found that AC300 will stop working if the power goes out even for a couple of seconds. I run 5 AC300's, a few AC500's and a couple of Fluval 404's and a few mics. brands on my various tanks. All my other filters will restart after a power outage with no problems. The AC300's however are another story. About two thirds of the time, I have to stick something down to the impellar to get it going again. That can be a real problem if the power ever goes out while your away for a day as I found out when I came home one day to find my fish suffocating in several of the tanks. Fortunatly I only lost about 12-18 little guys which is good considering I had a total of a couple hundred juvies in these tanks. The moral, watch your AC300's Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
albert_dao Posted December 19, 2005 Report Share Posted December 19, 2005 Just another word on filters that stop working.I have found that AC300 will stop working if the power goes out even for a couple of seconds. I run 5 AC300's, a few AC500's and a couple of Fluval 404's and a few mics. brands on my various tanks. All my other filters will restart after a power outage with no problems. The AC300's however are another story. About two thirds of the time, I have to stick something down to the impellar to get it going again. That can be a real problem if the power ever goes out while your away for a day as I found out when I came home one day to find my fish suffocating in several of the tanks. Fortunatly I only lost about 12-18 little guys which is good considering I had a total of a couple hundred juvies in these tanks. The moral, watch your AC300's AC300's indeed! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HOSStile Posted December 19, 2005 Report Share Posted December 19, 2005 I lost 3 fish late Saturday night.... must be bad carma. I run one of my 55s with 2 Fluval 203s. Saturday, I tore down one of the Fluvals completely cleaning it up while leaving the other running. I must have vacuumed up 5 pounds of poop even though I do weekly water changes. ( I have a 10 inch pleco.) I moved some rocks around while cleaning and I then refilled the tank. I overfilled it a little the water was touching the lids. Anyway we close the lids at night so no one jumps out. About 2 in the morning I go downstairs and walking by the fish tank noticed that all the fish were gasping and dying. A long story short, a rock fell over and closed off the main airline, the lids were down, the water was high and I am using closed filtration, the combination of which suffocated the fish. If any one of these variables were different it would have been ok. I will put this in the "CON," side of using canister filtration, besides the ones you have mentioned Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RDFISHGUY Posted December 21, 2005 Author Report Share Posted December 21, 2005 (edited) The good thing about it is my wife felt so bad that she said I could sell the tank . I did and I'm now waiting for my 228 gal custom. Should be ready Dec. 28 but its coming from Mitch so you never know.This one will be filtered by 3 AC500s!!!! Edited December 21, 2005 by RDFISHGUY Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moogled Posted December 26, 2005 Report Share Posted December 26, 2005 Good thing my Puffer tank is invincible and suffered no losses when I restarted it 4 days later. Winnage! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.