Filter Help

[Harlequins]

Test strips are very unreliable,i would suggest investing in a liquid test kit,API is a good un recommended by most here,it has ammonia/nitrite/nitrate/ph testing bottles.

To be honest the fish probably died through ammonia/nitrite poisoning rather than the filter,they will end up being sucked into the filter because they're weak from these poisonings.

On average a tank takes up to 6 weeks for the filter to cycle,and if you haven't done any waterchanges then i would think that you have either ammonia/nitrite spike or both going on in the tank.
And the only way to find this out is to test the water with a liquid test kit.

 

[Miamisportsfan45]

Using the API aquarium test strips, Nitrite reads between 1 to 3, and Nitrate reads 0-20. Between those ranges according to the back of the test strip.

 

[Harlequins]

Has you are in a fish in cycle,according to your nitrite i would do a very large waterchange,at least 75-90%,1-3 nitrite in very bad,ideally it needs to be zero or at most 0.25.
The fish will suffer from possible nitrite poisoning otherwise.
Then test it again to see what reading you get,sounds like you're going through a nitrite spike.
Have a read in the beginners section,this will help you with your fish in cycle.

Good luck

 

[Miamisportsfan45]

A nitrite spike? What is this?

 

[Honeythorn]

But they can still be kept in an aquarium, right? lol. Despite them being pond fish. They're small fish anyway. About an inch in a half or so in length...

But as for my filter troubles, what's a good filter that I can use in a 50 gallon tank, for smaller sized fish such as tetras? I don't necessarily trust this filter because I got it at a yard sale and it's also murdered my fish as well as other fish before.

If the filter is otherwise running fine then you really do not need to go out and pay for a new one. Just modify the one you have. Goldfish are strong active species and should not be sucked into an intake if in good health.

I've looked at the specs of the filter you have and it seems fine for the tank you have. It's rated for around 6 times turnover of the amount of water in your tank and is rated for tanks of 40-70 US gallons so that seems fine.

It could be that it simply cannot cope with the waste of 3 goldfish ( you did say 3 right? ) . Golds are very big waste producers indeed, some of the worst culprits in common aquarium fish ( along with plecs and oscars and the like ) . The eat a lot and poo a lot. They produce a lot of ammonia and since all you did to try and cycle it was chuck a few fish flakes ( which will do pretty much nothing to really get a cycle going ) then what you've ended up doing is a fish in cycle.

Basically your fish have been sitting in ther own waste in between water changes because the filter will not have grown enough bacteria to cope with all that ammonia. That build up of waste will have affected your fish and weakend them, which may have caused them to be sucked against the intake in their weakness.

Seriously, try modifying the intake with the mesh or sponge as I described and see if that helps with the flow if this really is a problem. If it does help, then all you would need to do is remove themesh/sponge when dirty or clogged, rinse it under a tap or in tank water when doing a water change, and tie it back on again.

And I agree you really should get a liquid test kit. They are very much more reliable than strips.

 

[OldMan47]

It sounds very much like you are in the middle of a fish-in cycle. For a good writeup on the fish-in cycle I have a link in my signature area.
If you actually had fish fry who were susceptible to being pulled into a filter, you could do as I did on a couple of my filters. I took a filter sponge, the kind your AC70 uses, and cut a slit in one end of it. Then I slipped it over the end of the inlet tube so that the water had to go through it before entering the filter. Before placing it on the filter it looked like this on my desktop.

Once in place for over a month it looked like this in my tank.

 

[Honeythorn]

A nitrite spike? What is this?

Your ammonia has dropped, and then your nitrites begine to rise as your ammonia once did. They will rise and fall as the cycle goes on. When your filter has enough bacteria in it to deal with your fishes waste, both will be reading as zero on a test kit after 24 hours and will stay like that once your tank is cycled and stable as long as you do weekly water changes.

 

[Hunterprey]

I think the same thing happened to my first fish, 3 goldfish. I didn't know about cycling then I just found them stuck at the end of the filter water intake dead it wasn't the filter that killed mine, it was the Ammonia/Nitrite spike that weakened them not being able to fight the current. But it wasn't the filter that killed them, they died b4 they got stuck there.

My tank pretty established now tho, no death for over 4 months now.

 

[Miamisportsfan45]

A nitrite spike? What is this?

Your ammonia has dropped, and then your nitrites begine to rise as your ammonia once did. They will rise and fall as the cycle goes on. When your filter has enough bacteria in it to deal with your fishes waste, both will be reading as zero on a test kit after 24 hours and will stay like that once your tank is cycled and stable as long as you do weekly water changes.

Will I eventually ever have to worry about ammonia and nitrite levels again? Would the filter handle that? I still don't know what to do about my filter killing my fish.

 

[OldMan47]

Once you get the filter cycled, it should stay that way unless you actually change the filter media. This means most of us only have experienced a new tank cycle one time in our present fish keeping. After that we clone filters or use other approaches to avoid a brand new cycle from scratch. I have gone in and out of fish keeping several times over the last 50 years but have only had to cycle a very few times in my life.

 

[Miamisportsfan45]

Which part do I clean in my filter?

 

[OldMan47]

You clean the whole thing. The inlet and return tubes can often be cleaned with a bottle brush or something similar. The sponges, bioballs, ceramic noodles and ceramic media get rinsed out in used tank water during a water change. The impeller and the well that it sits down in get a very thorough cleaning because it takes almost nothing to stop that part from working. You probably end up tossing and replacing the bit of filter floss that many filters use as a final filter. Even the filter case gets a quick scrub with a brush that is never used for anything but filter cleaning. When you put the filter back together, you take great care to make sure the impeller gets seated properly in the little rubbery bearings that the impeller shaft runs in. Otherwise you often have a filter that just won't pump after you are certain that you have done everything just right.