Tag Archives: aquarium filter

Thing One

I’ve been trying to get to cleaning my aquarium for the past week. I TALK a good game sometimes, but am not always terrific about actually following through. I just finished finally DOING it as one of my two projects for the day.

Everything is squeeky clean for them now. They didn’t SAY anything, or do back flips, but they HAVE been checking out the huge shell in the tank, swimming the length of the opening over and over. They are too big to actually get inside, so they can look to their heart’s content.

I only have two fish, but they are goldfish – notorious for needing a lot of care to keep their tank clean. I have found a combination that works really well, after a lot of trial and error. I’m using a filtering system called AquaClear. It has a three-part filter consisting of foam, a layer called, BioMax that filters out bio ‘stuff,’ and finally a carbon filter. This worked pretty well, but I was still getting a lot of algae pretty quickly. I found a product call No More Algae. It’s a tablet you put into the tank after you clean it. It says not to use a carbon filter with it, so I paid attention. Now I can go a month or more before even thinking about having to change the water.

Now I finally have happy, clean fish who are pleased with the addition of the shell to explore.

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Filed under Family, Housekeeping - Maintenance

Laborious Aquarium Clean-Out

What is usually a 30 minute job turned into at least a two-HOUR job this morning and afternoon. I was putting together the aquarium after cleaning and ran into a problem with the filter. The motor wasn’t running when I plugged it in. I played with it, my muttering becoming more and more colorful as nothing worked. I finally asked my husband to come look at it.

He looked at things, tested it, and decided it was dead. I found one of our old filters and installed it so that the sweet fish wouldn’t croak while we waited for a replacement. My husband continued to look at the one that wasn’t working, and decided it was working again. I changed things out, only to find out the motor died. We did this two more times. Finally, he took the filter apart as far as he could and found a part he thought had been jammed. I changed the filters out for the fourth time and it worked. I told my husband I would fix lunch and leave the new filter running and see if it quit again.

I came back after lunch and it was still working. I then proceeded to clean up the kitchen – which is always a mess after aquarium cleaning – PLUS now from the lunch fixing. I have just now finished cleaning up and leaving the dishwasher running.

All this for two goldfish who never say a word, show any affection, do tricks, or perform any service. They DID get into the far right corner of the tank and wriggle their little bodies, opening and closing their mouths as they looked at me. I broke down and put a bit more food in the tank.

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Filed under Challenges, Family, Housekeeping - Maintenance