not to much of an emergency, but wanted advice on best way to deal with it,
yesterday my fx5 started making some noises like it was full of air, ie on and off,
only did a water change a week ago, so did another unplugged the fx5 and when finished,
it filled up as normal, plugged back in and nothing, sounds like it has died,
luckily it is still under guarentee, rang the lfs and they do have a replacement,
but its closed now unil tomorrow, i do have a fluval 305 as well so will be ok until tomorrrow,
i will keep my media but not sure if thats the best? as obviously the bacteria will have died by the time i plug in new one, is it still better to use old media?
at the moment its still sitting with water in it but not flowing?
what is best thing to do?

The biological media requires oxygen which is created by water flow, i.e. the filter being fully operational. I'm afraid that even if the media is submerged in water, without this oxygen all the media will be dead by the time you get your new filter

OFL wrote:


thought so, thanks

but would you still use the old media or new?

You can still use the old media, I would give it a wash first.

ok thanks

was just worried that leaving the media soaking or drying out may cause poisons to build up, refering to other post,
SPARE FILTER, think i will invest in a spare when i go to collect the replacement tomorrow

I think it is wise to give the media a wash before you put in your new filter. Obviously if it completely dries out than I would have thought that any nasty bacteria will also die as well. However, if it's going to remain damp it's always better to be safe than sorry. I can't say I've ever had the problem when I have used old media.

again thanks,
better to ask those that know

Started of today going to do 4 tanks water changes, and ended up with a mini crisis,
spent about 2 hours looking for a receipt, but luckily the lfs keeps records of filters
in a book

this might sound stupid, but would les be able to keep the filter alive if he put the baskets in a bucket of tank water and put a large air stone in with them?

like i said, this might be stupid, but its a genuine suggestion?

T

No, it's not a stupid suggestion, in fact it's something I did myself a few weeks ago when I was carrying out maintenance on the sump. However, I found that the air bubbles were easily pushed off course by any obstruction in their way. So if you put the stone underneath the baskets, I suspect that the bubbles wouldn't actually move up through the media, rather around the side. But it's worth a try you got nothing to lose, but you will make quite a big stone. You could just push the pipe in the bottom basket and see what happens

Thanks for that Tony,
i think i may have already passed that point though, as it was about 3pm this afternoon,
when i switched the fx5 off and after doing water change and cleaning/changing some media it filled itself back up but then no power, so i think the motor has died,

actually good idea i wish i had thought off, as i take out dirty water to a plastic dustbin and then use a clean one to put water back, so the bin would have been plenty big enough to hold the cages, again hindsight is good lol but i use a pond pump to put the clean water back in so i could have put it in the bin with the cages,
good idea Tony and one i will deffo keep in mind, and hopefully info is here for anyone who may in the future have the same problem,

As i said yesterday the fx5 just started making noises as if it had air in it,
so looks like the motor was on it's way out, i just thought it may have picked some crap up and was slightly blocked, sadly not.

Thanks Again for advice and ideas

Have you checked the fuse in the plug?

Yep did that first Marcus
also tried the fuses in something else in case i had two dodgy fuses.
sadly my luck never that good lol