You should install a switch in the power cord between the timer and the filter. Then you won't lose settings. Or better yet, upgrade to smart plugs. They can be turned off easily and retain timer settings.
Over the back or canister filter?
- Thread starter Jan Cavalieri
- Start date
Happy day...I couldn't resist piling on. Its sort of like back in old Mother Russia when you saw a line, you just got in it because there had to be something good people were waiting for, even if the lady in front of you didn't know what it was, either. I use the simple timer with the pegs in it on two lights, and APC sells one (https://www.apc.com/shop/us/en/prod...ial-SurgeArrest-4-Outlet-Wall-Tap-120V/P-P4GC) that retains the settings due to an onboard battery.
Regarding HoB vs. Canister, I loved my magnums for 20 years until my back gave out. I sold them on eBay for what I bought them for...it was great. Like the Magnums, Aquaclear never dies and my old one is from 1989. The HoB is just easier to fiddle with. One downside to the canister filters is the disconnect/reconnect. Over time the hoses harden and just aren't as flexible. This can result in your floor being given an unexpected washing, with the attendant screaming of family members who feel that aquarium water is not a suitable cleaning agent.
Regarding the clogging...someone else recommended a sponge around the uplift tube, and that works. You can also buy a replacement attachment for the uplift tube that is wider. I've even converted a breeder bucket into a pre-filter.
And finally, to keep floating plants fro gumming up the works, consider using straws to serve as a blockers on the surface of the tank. You can connect them together to make all sorts of shapes, and a suction cup with a dab of glue will hold that in place.
Regarding HoB vs. Canister, I loved my magnums for 20 years until my back gave out. I sold them on eBay for what I bought them for...it was great. Like the Magnums, Aquaclear never dies and my old one is from 1989. The HoB is just easier to fiddle with. One downside to the canister filters is the disconnect/reconnect. Over time the hoses harden and just aren't as flexible. This can result in your floor being given an unexpected washing, with the attendant screaming of family members who feel that aquarium water is not a suitable cleaning agent.
Regarding the clogging...someone else recommended a sponge around the uplift tube, and that works. You can also buy a replacement attachment for the uplift tube that is wider. I've even converted a breeder bucket into a pre-filter.
And finally, to keep floating plants fro gumming up the works, consider using straws to serve as a blockers on the surface of the tank. You can connect them together to make all sorts of shapes, and a suction cup with a dab of glue will hold that in place.
OP
OP
Wow what an amazing amount of information! I think given the size of the tank (29 gallon) a canister is probably overkill. I was just hoping that it would not pick up the frogbit and Algae and get clogged but would handle this debris better than a HOB - I'm beginning to think it wouldn't make a difference. What is particularly strange about this tank is that it;s ALWAYS had problems compared to my other 3 tank - which have their issues but nothing like this tank. All but one (my little 6 gallon betta tank) get this nasty brown sticky stuff but this tank having it the worst. . It clogs the INSIDE of the filter - especially the sponge until no water can get through. the Aquaclear has a little basket that you place your media in and the holes in the bottom of the basket get filled up by this brown gunk. If I remove the filter and take out all the media - the sides and bottom and the impeller pieces are also clogged by this brown stuff. If it was plain green algae I would have it covered with the fish that live in the tank (5- all pleco's including a bristlenose and a Thomasi both of which eat a lot of GREEN algae. I have a UV light which takes out the green algae fairly well but doesn't touch the brown stuff. The plants get COVERED in it as do all the decorations.
When we clean the tank weekly (close to 90%) we spend a huge amount of time scrubbing the brown stuff off the decorative items as well as off of all the plant leaves. We take them all out of the tank and soak them in water and a small amount of algaefix (this stuff is incredibly toxic to fish half the reviews on Amazon say all their fish are killed by it - so I'll NEVER add it to the tank. It does, however, loosen up the brown stuff on the decorative items making them easier to clean - then I do multiple rinses to get rid of the AlgaeFix chemical. After this is done we scrub down the walls then add additional buckets of water and suction it out to make sure the gravel is clean of all debris.
I've tried to take a picture of the brown stuff but my cell phone doesn't really show it off. As I've said the filter is full of it - I'll never have "good" bacteria in my sponge because it gets covered in the brown stuff as well as frogbit so it has to be rinsed off. I'm treating this like it's some sort of infection so I don't want to clean the sponge in bucket water because the bucket water is brown and full of the brown gunk but the sponge is still successfully filtering the tank because most of the brown gunk gets in the filter and not in the tank - especially just after cleaning the filter.
The LED full-spectrum light is on from about noon to 2 am. I have now managed to remember to turn out all lights by midnight instead of 2 am. I am no longer over feeding but assuming all the hiding plecos are somehow getting enough food. The only time I see these fish is during a water change when I take their "caves" away for cleaning. At least 3 species out of 4 are algae eaters (ie., not counting the dojos). Oh and as an aside, the Dojos take great fun in pulling plants out by the roots, rearranging all the decorative items and chasing my hand and suction "biting" when I stick my hand in the tank - it's like having 8" long toddlers running around but they are so silly. I think they are distant relatives of seals.
After cleaning and for about 2 days the tank is spotless. There is never any leftover food around EXCEPT the damn Dojo's eat about 4 little pellets at once and tiny pieces fall out of the sides of their mouth - that's their main diet. They don't go back and eat it all up but some of the other fish do. I am not seeing any excess food on the floor of the tank. I've cut the lighting time from 12 hours to 10 hours.
After 2 days - all bets are off - you would think the tank hadn't been cleaned in month with the brown water and brown gunk floating about. The plants continue to successfully grow. Especially the frogbit LOL.
Anyway until I figure out how to get rid of the brown slime I'm going to have problems I was just wanting something that would filter the hell out of the water and not shut down 100% like my AquaClears do and thought maybe a canister filter would do the trick. Anyway I'm thinking about shutting this tank down since there are only 5 fish in it, I don't want to add more fish until I get rid of the brown slime
When we clean the tank weekly (close to 90%) we spend a huge amount of time scrubbing the brown stuff off the decorative items as well as off of all the plant leaves. We take them all out of the tank and soak them in water and a small amount of algaefix (this stuff is incredibly toxic to fish half the reviews on Amazon say all their fish are killed by it - so I'll NEVER add it to the tank. It does, however, loosen up the brown stuff on the decorative items making them easier to clean - then I do multiple rinses to get rid of the AlgaeFix chemical. After this is done we scrub down the walls then add additional buckets of water and suction it out to make sure the gravel is clean of all debris.
I've tried to take a picture of the brown stuff but my cell phone doesn't really show it off. As I've said the filter is full of it - I'll never have "good" bacteria in my sponge because it gets covered in the brown stuff as well as frogbit so it has to be rinsed off. I'm treating this like it's some sort of infection so I don't want to clean the sponge in bucket water because the bucket water is brown and full of the brown gunk but the sponge is still successfully filtering the tank because most of the brown gunk gets in the filter and not in the tank - especially just after cleaning the filter.
The LED full-spectrum light is on from about noon to 2 am. I have now managed to remember to turn out all lights by midnight instead of 2 am. I am no longer over feeding but assuming all the hiding plecos are somehow getting enough food. The only time I see these fish is during a water change when I take their "caves" away for cleaning. At least 3 species out of 4 are algae eaters (ie., not counting the dojos). Oh and as an aside, the Dojos take great fun in pulling plants out by the roots, rearranging all the decorative items and chasing my hand and suction "biting" when I stick my hand in the tank - it's like having 8" long toddlers running around but they are so silly. I think they are distant relatives of seals.
After cleaning and for about 2 days the tank is spotless. There is never any leftover food around EXCEPT the damn Dojo's eat about 4 little pellets at once and tiny pieces fall out of the sides of their mouth - that's their main diet. They don't go back and eat it all up but some of the other fish do. I am not seeing any excess food on the floor of the tank. I've cut the lighting time from 12 hours to 10 hours.
After 2 days - all bets are off - you would think the tank hadn't been cleaned in month with the brown water and brown gunk floating about. The plants continue to successfully grow. Especially the frogbit LOL.
Anyway until I figure out how to get rid of the brown slime I'm going to have problems I was just wanting something that would filter the hell out of the water and not shut down 100% like my AquaClears do and thought maybe a canister filter would do the trick. Anyway I'm thinking about shutting this tank down since there are only 5 fish in it, I don't want to add more fish until I get rid of the brown slime
JC:
you could try lowering the flow rate on the AC via the protruding pin on top. Maybe that will result in less algae etc to be sucked into the filter.
you could try lowering the flow rate on the AC via the protruding pin on top. Maybe that will result in less algae etc to be sucked into the filter.
OP
OP
Well I think the whole purpose of the filter is to get rid of nasty stuff in the water ie., keep the water clear and clean and decreasing the flow would probably defeat the purpose of keeping the water clean but would make my life easier.
I can't believe this post has gone into three pages. I thought maybe I should post what this algae (if that's what it is) looks like:
The first picture is just a piece I pulled out of the water and laid on a paper towel, It looks like brown cotton candy floating in the water and hangs off all decorations and all the plant leaves. This sample is about 1"x3". It's pretty big. I've seen a fish have to shake it's body to get it off his/her face. The 2nd picture is the bottom of an AqualClear basket after being in the filter overnight. I clean the bottom of the filter before I go to bed and it's just about the first thing I have to clean from at least 1 of the 3 filters the next morning. Today it was covering all the filters at least this much and this much is enough to reduce water flow to a trickle. At the same time (no picture) the intake tube is often covered with FrogBit or other vegetation - which is kind of part of having vegetation floating on top of the water - the fish love the coverage, the humans hate the mess - I've never found any foliage that is great at floating and providing coverage for the fish, but also stays out of filters uptake tubes. If anybody knows the best kind of foliage to use - let me know. The one thing I can say about frogbit is that it grows really fast and some of the fish (mainly my DoJo's) enjoy eating it.
So I guess the question is - would this clog up a canister filter to a point where it would stop the filtering of water (I want the water to get clean and this stuff gone) - if a canister filter handles large debris better than a HOB filter then I would consider it. Right now I just bought a size 70 AquaClear filter for my most problematic fish tank which is only 29 gallons, I have that size filter for my 50 gallon tank and it BY FAR is less problematic to deal with. I swear that intake tube can be covered with this brown stuff and frogbit and the water flow still isn't disturbed. It only slows the water flow when the basket gets covered.
Oh, and an aside - when you load a basket full of media, you load the sponge in first - so when the basket looks like the picture below the SPONGE is COVERED AND DRIPPING with this brown gunk ie., it ceases to be an effective filter medium, so even though it has good bacteria in it you want to run it under clean water and squeeze it out really good or throw it out and get a new sponge - so I loose the good bacteria that live in the filter. To compensate, I pour a capful of Tetra's brand of bacteria to jump start new tanks into cycling - I figure I'm just helping to repopulate what I lost by rinsing out the filter.
The only thing that disturbs me is that on one tank I have lost 5 Dwarf Gourami over a period of a week. When I tested the water it was PERFECT except it showed a Nitrite level of .50 ppm which probably would be enough to kill some fish but I'm also concerned that they may have that Dwarf Gourami virus some people have mentioned since ONLY dwarf Gourami have died. They were all purchased the same week from two different locations - one was the online store LiveAquaria , which I've bought from many times and the other was Petsmart. The were neon dwarf gourami, flame dwarf gourami and just "regular" dwarf gourami. This is half of the total number I purchased - and the dead bodies showed no sign of illness or damage - and I never saw them just before they died, so I can't describe any symptoms - they look in perfect condition, My assistant wasn't available and I struggle with water changes but I removed about 3 "jan-sized" buckets and then replaced the water with 4 "jan-sized" buckets due to evaporation in this 29 gallon tank. I haven't run a water test on any other tank yet, and this one tank is the only one with gourami. Hopefully my pathetic water change helped lower the nitrites a little bit. No deaths so far today.
I can't believe this post has gone into three pages. I thought maybe I should post what this algae (if that's what it is) looks like:
The first picture is just a piece I pulled out of the water and laid on a paper towel, It looks like brown cotton candy floating in the water and hangs off all decorations and all the plant leaves. This sample is about 1"x3". It's pretty big. I've seen a fish have to shake it's body to get it off his/her face. The 2nd picture is the bottom of an AqualClear basket after being in the filter overnight. I clean the bottom of the filter before I go to bed and it's just about the first thing I have to clean from at least 1 of the 3 filters the next morning. Today it was covering all the filters at least this much and this much is enough to reduce water flow to a trickle. At the same time (no picture) the intake tube is often covered with FrogBit or other vegetation - which is kind of part of having vegetation floating on top of the water - the fish love the coverage, the humans hate the mess - I've never found any foliage that is great at floating and providing coverage for the fish, but also stays out of filters uptake tubes. If anybody knows the best kind of foliage to use - let me know. The one thing I can say about frogbit is that it grows really fast and some of the fish (mainly my DoJo's) enjoy eating it.
So I guess the question is - would this clog up a canister filter to a point where it would stop the filtering of water (I want the water to get clean and this stuff gone) - if a canister filter handles large debris better than a HOB filter then I would consider it. Right now I just bought a size 70 AquaClear filter for my most problematic fish tank which is only 29 gallons, I have that size filter for my 50 gallon tank and it BY FAR is less problematic to deal with. I swear that intake tube can be covered with this brown stuff and frogbit and the water flow still isn't disturbed. It only slows the water flow when the basket gets covered.
Oh, and an aside - when you load a basket full of media, you load the sponge in first - so when the basket looks like the picture below the SPONGE is COVERED AND DRIPPING with this brown gunk ie., it ceases to be an effective filter medium, so even though it has good bacteria in it you want to run it under clean water and squeeze it out really good or throw it out and get a new sponge - so I loose the good bacteria that live in the filter. To compensate, I pour a capful of Tetra's brand of bacteria to jump start new tanks into cycling - I figure I'm just helping to repopulate what I lost by rinsing out the filter.
The only thing that disturbs me is that on one tank I have lost 5 Dwarf Gourami over a period of a week. When I tested the water it was PERFECT except it showed a Nitrite level of .50 ppm which probably would be enough to kill some fish but I'm also concerned that they may have that Dwarf Gourami virus some people have mentioned since ONLY dwarf Gourami have died. They were all purchased the same week from two different locations - one was the online store LiveAquaria , which I've bought from many times and the other was Petsmart. The were neon dwarf gourami, flame dwarf gourami and just "regular" dwarf gourami. This is half of the total number I purchased - and the dead bodies showed no sign of illness or damage - and I never saw them just before they died, so I can't describe any symptoms - they look in perfect condition, My assistant wasn't available and I struggle with water changes but I removed about 3 "jan-sized" buckets and then replaced the water with 4 "jan-sized" buckets due to evaporation in this 29 gallon tank. I haven't run a water test on any other tank yet, and this one tank is the only one with gourami. Hopefully my pathetic water change helped lower the nitrites a little bit. No deaths so far today.
eatyourpeas
Fish Herder
Could they be diatoms?
Kyle E.
Fish Crazy
One thing for the frogbit...
I don't know about the aquaclear (never used one) but my tetra whisper 40 HOB has multiple pieces for the intake tube so you can make it longer, shorter etc.
If the aquaclear does that I would suggest maybe extending the tube to keep it away from the frogbit.
I hope I don't have this problem when I get frogbit in a few days...
That is a great idea! I have been wondering what to do about that. I was thinking getting some airline tubing but I might try straws instead.
That's some nasty stuff you've got there. Hope you can get the tank better!
I don't know about the aquaclear (never used one) but my tetra whisper 40 HOB has multiple pieces for the intake tube so you can make it longer, shorter etc.
If the aquaclear does that I would suggest maybe extending the tube to keep it away from the frogbit.
I hope I don't have this problem when I get frogbit in a few days...
That is a great idea! I have been wondering what to do about that. I was thinking getting some airline tubing but I might try straws instead.
That's some nasty stuff you've got there. Hope you can get the tank better!
OP
OP
Aquaclear has tube extensions mine are far below the frog bit but because it's so light it just sucks it in anyway. You may love it because it grows fast, hate it because every time you stick your hand/arm in the aquarium it will come out covered in frogbit. You'll have to push it out of the way for feeding time. Personally I think it's a menace. We're slowly getting rid of it by skimming the surface of the tank and that's where all the frogbit live - we'll come up with netfulls - which we dump in the trash. It's just too out of control for me and it clogs everything up. I think the "algae" may be clumps of decaying frogbit. But it turns brown too fast to be frogbit.
OP
OP
Happy day...check out Youtube for Foo the Flowerhorn...one of his videos shows him melting hard plastic tubing and making a shape. One of his fan apprecation videos shows a fan who built a multi-colored one that looks pretty cool. I know that the best things I tend to make using fire are piles of ashes and angry people, so I went to a fast food joint and immitated goverment by redistributing the straws from them, to me. The thicker straws that one would prefer for sucking through milkshakes worked better for me as stuff wasn't as likely to slip underneath.
eatyourpeas
Fish Herder
If you can get some ostracods (seed shrimp), that would help greatly. Diatoms can appear from overfeeding and too much light. I encourage their growth in one of my tanks so I can keep the ostracods happy, which in turn feed my sparkling gourami and pea puffers.
Dojos are weather loaches. Mine eat everything. Blood worms, shrimps and such. However, they like zucchini and such too. One of mine will pass up on everything else to get at the algae wafer I put in for the plecos.Jan, you've mentioned your dojo loaches a lot - are they the same as weather loaches, as google suggests?
According to Seriously fish they are not algae eaters, they are a predator which eats insect larvae, small crustaceans etc.Misgurnus anguillicaudatus – Oriental Weather Loach — Seriously Fish
www.seriouslyfish.com
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