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Well, I knew I was pushing the limits with my filtration and it has resulted in me loosing two yellow labs (females) and leaving one of the male labs in bad condition. I have a Fluval304 & run an airstone strip for xtra aeration. Well I must've mistakingly knocked the airline off & when I woke in the morning I had lost the two labs, two other labs were laying on the bottom (still upright) and all other fish where at the surface gasping for air. I ended up pluging the the airline back in & doing a 30% water change figuring the fresh water would help. Bottom line was that in less than a 1/2 hour the fish seemed all back to normal xcept for obviosly the ones that were already lost and one male lab. The other two male labs began picking on him so I isolated him & now just keeping an eye on him to see if he recovers. I will put in a 2nd filter but it will have to wait until next week. The bad part, aside from of course the losses, is I just added two female labs like 3 weeks ago, one of them survived and I lost my oldest cichlid as far as time of ownership b/c of my clumsyness. On the bright side It could've been a lot worse. Go ahead & tell me how stupid I am, I deserve it. ad:

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WiseIves,
Im sorry to hear of the loss of your fish.
Things like this happen!
As a suggestion, a cheap way to up filtration,
and hook up to your existing setup, is a large
sponge filter. These run on an air stone.
One rated for 40g would be great for your tank,
will measure around 6x6 inch square or so,
and would do wonders. This also allows for more
aeration.
BigAls sells sponge filters for great prices.
http://www.bigalsonline.com
Fluvals are mighty lousy filters too,
if you did want to add another canister, I highly
recommend you take a look at the Rena XP-Series.
They are fabulous filters....in my opinion on par
with Eheim, but a fraction of the cost of an Eheim,
and way easier to boot.





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wow, never knew that fluvals were not a good filter always thought they were decent. Also I never knew that according to a member on another site "Cannister filters, like the 304, require a lot of oxygen in the water to work and the bacteria in their media pull a lot of oxygen out of the water to convert ammonia to nitrite and nitrite to nitrate. Your fish likely died of anoxia, rather than poor filtration." If this was the case I really have to rework my filtration. I will continue to work my airstrips and will look into the sponges you speak of. Thanx. Also does anyone know if this is really the case with canister filters? I will post something on technical tinkering to get different opinions.

By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you'll be happy. If you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher.
Socrates-
I happen to have become a philosopher

I dont know if that is the case with canisters.
I know many people on this site do not run airstones
of any kind on their tanks and have not had the problems
you mention.
I have a fluval 204, and its the worst canister of
the 3 kinds I own. Mine shuts itself off spontaneously
several times a month.
Rena XP-series are the best.
Eheims are good too but more difficult to maintain and
get going and set up.


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I see what your saying about the oxygen issue. Anyways I will continue to run the fluval as It's already been running & getting a new cannister is not in the budget. My friend has offered me a tetra powerfilter that he used to run on a 55 which is what I'll use along with the fluval for the meantime until I make a final descision on what to do as my final answer.

By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you'll be happy. If you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher.
Socrates-
I happen to have become a philosopher