Ira

I might apologize to the CEO if I got my present. As it is, I got a TV&DVD player(Wife and I to ourselves), a screwdriver set, a swiss army knife, hagen long grabber cutter thing for fishtanks and a few other little bits and pieces.

Oh, great, I took the 404 off, tore it down completely, no clogs anywhere, doesn't need cleaned, I wiped the pump area out just for the hell of it and put it back on the tank. Now it's working great, let's see if it stays that way. I think I've figured out why all my 404s are buzzing, though. I noticed there's a little black bit of plastic that seems like it's intended to hold the impeller in place vertically. On both the 404s I looked at the piece has a ring apparently worn into it and on the lid(That clips onto the power unit) there's a little semicircle that must be won away by the impeller. BTW, never, ever, EVER when shutting down a tank just turn the cannister off and forget to clean it out. I grabbed one that was on a tank I'm not using anymore thinking I'd swap it with the misbehaving one and...It was...Well, it smelled a little like an outhouse sitting on a vent in Rotorua. It was all black inside. Nasty. Got it running in the sink with some bleach to kill anything. I doubt anyone's paying any attention...Oh well, at least talking to myself gets my post count up.

NOW it's christmas! 1 am! Can I open my pressies now?

Well, I figured out why one of the filters wasn't going, the 304. Embarrasingly obvious, actually. The intake was clogged. It's behind a bunch of rocks so I can't see it. I should have thought of that, but I was more concerned with getting the other filter going well. The intake had even had a little clump of java fern growing out of it. Now it's going well, though. But, the 404 is down to barely a trickle again and I KNOW its intake isn't clogged.

You won't get any good bacteria in the tank if you don't have any fish in it or aren't dosing it with ammonia. No fish=no ammonia=no cycle.

Nah, just use a long gravel vac to reach the bottom, there are also long gripper things they could use. Pain in the ass though for anything like a planted tank, which his definitely isn't. I should know, got a 3-4 foot tall hex tank, can't even come close to reaching the bottom of it.

I'd have to make a wild guess, but I'd say somewhere around 4 feet wide by 4 feet tall by 2 feet deep. It seems a similar depth and width as my 400 liter tank but is a lot taller, at least twice as tall or more. Guess 800 liters. Haven't seen it in a while.

I don't really have a prefered vet, we usually use the place in silverstream just because it's closest. I'd say that giant gourami is doing ok in that tank. It's actually a pretty big tank, even if it is small for the fish. He seems to be pretty healthy, so I wouldn't say he's better off being put down. The cockatoo I'm talking about was in addition to the 2 near the door, he was usually in the back with the rest of the birds.

Don't know if you noticed, but the cockatoo disappeared for about 6 months. My wife and I had it. The guy told us to the effect that it wasn't sick, it had just gotten a fright and lost all its feathers. We didn't really believe that, but he said he'd give us a chance to try and nurse him back to health. Over the 6 months we did more research and found out a lot about PBFD and eventually he started showing signs of it effecting his beak(It basically gets distorted enough for the bird to be unable to eat) so we gave it back to him. That's when he said, "Yeah, I knew it had PBFD, we had it tested." He eventually had it put down, which he should have done as soon as he knew it was infected.

Wait, Kells is talking about the hutt pet center as being good? Unless I'm misunderstanding which one @ndrew meant, that's the one he and I were saying is HORRIBLE. They don't just cut costs on their fish, they do on their pets too. Anyone remember the sulphur crested cockatoo they used to have there that was missing most of his feathers? Had a disease called Psittacine Beak and Feather Disease. Extremely contagious, almost always fatal, and all his parrots there will likely be infected now.

I haven't found a suction cup that DOESN'T go all hard and unflexible and lose its grip within a few months.

The CEO of Fluval's head on a pike! AAHHHH! A few days ago I noticed my cichlids weren't looking very happy. A few of them were gasping a bit so I threw an airstone in the tank. The next day one of my blue rams died but everyone else had stopped gasping. Hmmm, odd, one of the filters, a 304, looks like it's not putting out much more than a trickle. Seems like it's just got a bubble in it, it should clear up. Next day...Hmmm, odd, looks like the 404 is barely putting out a trickle too! So, today I've gone and cleaned both of them. The 404 I even yanked out all the hoses and checked them. Neither seems to be back up to flow after cleaning. Isn't the point of having two filters redundancy? Where's the redundancy if they both go at the same time? *Mutter*

What's the address? I don't know of any "Famous red burger shop" in lower hutt.

Yeah, wouldn't want someone to read that some place doesn't take care of their fish well and then choose to think for themselves and save them from possibly buying a diseased fish that wipes out their entire tank. We all know letting people know what certain fish stores are like is bad for fishkeeping.

I disagree. Definitely it wasn't slanderous, that would require it to be untrue, which it definitely wasn't and I don't believe it was abusive either. Just a statement of fact.

Like most boards, you can say anything about a company or individual as long as you leave out anything negative that might actually help someone and keep them from making a mistake or buying something from a bad business or individual.

Find me somewhere that they pay enough for retail work to hire someone that actually knows much. I don't know what exactly they pay at Animates, but I was talking to Jamie(The guy that used to breed fighters) and they don't make much more than $9 an hour. Pretty pathetic pay for a job that's a lot of work like that one.

If you're worried about the cost, Charcoal really is unnecessary. Just do reasonable size water changes, even then you don't really need to do it. And you can rinse filter wool, it works just fine. But even then it's something like $5 for a lifetime supply(Exaggerating). I don't even use filter wool for the most part because I just can't be bothered buying any. May grab some next time I see some though. The sponges do a good enough job, in my opinion and they're definitely reusable. With just the sponges and media there is definitely nothing that needs replacing. I've never used any kind of filter that uses cartridges. Are you sure they can't be rinsed?

I never change the media. It's not necessary to change it, just give it all a good rinse to get the crap off, and it's basically good as new. I've never had any of my filters so clogged that they wouldn't flow at all even after not cleaning one that needs cleaning about every other week after not cleaning it for a few months. All the crap did clog the sink though. Yuck.

Hard to say if it's too much flow without seeing it, but when I had my swarm of guppies they didn't seem a bit bothered by the flow when I had a fluval 404 on a 100 liter tank. They'd swim in the flow from the filter. They were also quite happy in my tanks which I use rainwater, so I don't think it would be too soft for them. Other than guppies...How about a few danios? Don't know how they'd do as dither fish, but they're pretty quick fish so shouldn't care about current.

Honestly, that sounds more like bad tank maintenance than a fault of the heater. Just a thought, I'd think it would be best putting it on the outlet side of the filter instead of the inlet. I doubt it heats the water up much(Heat a lot of water a little) so having hot water going in the cannister wouldn't be a worry, but I think it'd be best to have hopefully cleaner water going through the heater to minimize gunk buildup. Probably not a big deal though.

I used to have 3 in my 200 liter 4 foot tank. My 400 liter (4 foot again, which is why I hate using the lengths for any tank) they had heaps of room.They were quite a nice size, about 4-5" long. Didn't seem like too small of a tank for them yet and that was after two years. I kinda wish I hadn't gotten rid of them since I moved them back to the smaller tank because they kept eating the plants, but now I've given up on the plants and wish I could put them back in the big tank. Their big maximum size and jumpiness is the only bad thing I can think of about them. They've got a great temperment other than that and take years to get very big anyway.

Could use a powerhead to either suck the water in or pump it in. Anything bigger than a small powerhead might require making the bucket airtight around the lid. Don't know how difficult that would be. But it would make a nice big cannister filter if you did it right.

Doesn't matter if there's an antidote. Any venomous animal is banned from being imported. Eliminates a lot of saltwater imports. Probably eliminates most anemones because they all at least slightly venomous/poisonous/whatever the correct terminology is.

Just a note, the fish has been happy and healthy for the six months since I started this thread. Must have just been a bad tummy.