sbrown64

I received for my birthday (6/12/06) an Aqua One Regency 100 tank, which was supplied with the above external filter. As of today i have about 22 fish, but i have noticed their seems to be quite a bit of matter floating around. The local petshop said it could be my carbon needs replacing and also told me to buy some EASYBALANCE and put in 5 x 10ML per week which would keep my tank clean. I have also noticed that the external pipes from the tank to the filter look quite dirty inside the tubing.

What should I do? also as this is my first fish tank i havent got a clue how to turn off and clean out the external filter. Any help gratefully appreciated.

Regards

Stephen Brown

TIME
pH RANGE ammonia nitrite nitrate
09/12/2006 7.7 0.1 0.1 30 14:00
12/12/2006 8 0.1 0.15 30 17:30
18/12/2006 8 0.4 2 30 20:00
30/12/2006 7.5 0.1 0.5 25 11:00

07/12/2006 5 GLOWLIGHT TETRAS
09/12/2006 5 ASSORTED MOLLYS
09/12/2006 2 TIGER BARBS
09/12/2006 1 ORANGE SPOT PLEC
11/12/2006 5 TIGER BARBS (SMALL)
12/12/2006 -1 SAILFIN BLACK MOLLY DEAD
13/12/2006 -1 GOLD MOLLY DEAD
24/12/2006 2 ALBINO RAINBOW SHARK
24/12/2006 4 SUCKING LOACHES
27/12/2006 3 ASSORTED MOLLYS

Jason

What you need to do is clean your filter, its probably starting to clog up and less water is being filtered, hence the floating matter. Those Easybalance things dont really do much and is definately not a replacement for a water change.

Most external filters should come with an instruction manual of how to open and what to clean. You would want to clean using old tank water the filter media and replace the carbon with another carbon piece or use a different piece of media all together. Carbon mostly removes toxins but quickly becomes saturated and then most of toxin absorbing ability is non existant.

As for the tubes you can either buy or make your own tube cleaners to clean them out.

How often are you changing your water