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PreFilter

2K views 17 replies 11 participants last post by  pmcarbrey 
#1 ·
I ended up adding some neons to my tank. I started with 6 yesterday this morning I could only find 5. An hour later I was down to 4. I started looking for the missing two and spent about an hour looking through the plants. Took a break and started looking again. Looked at my aquaclear hob and initially didn't see anything. Finally decided to take the filter apart and low and behold in the media carriage I find two neons swimming around. They happily joined the other four. I will be adding 6 more in a few weeks. The neons were pretty small but I didn't think they were small enough to fit through the intake.
I am off to buy a prefilter.
 
#9 ·
So got the fluval edge pre a1387 from my lfs and it fits perfectly. Thanks guys.
But now i have another problem. It seems one of the neons that went into the filter got hurt. Seemd like one of his fins got damaged. I heard salt baths are supposed to help. Any helpful advice on salt baths?
 
#12 ·
I'm not telling you to not use a prefilter in your tank, but there's no way that those neons went though your filter intake and then through the impeller and were swimming around in the box. That would be like suddenly finding a small cow in your hamburger bun. If you have a problem with keeping them in your tank you might want to consider closing up the space they have available to jump out.
 
#13 ·
actually i've witnessed fish get sucked into the filter out the impeller and into the "tank' of the filter... they are smaller then you think...
 
#15 ·
Not going to dispute any thing but all know is I started with 6 then lost one then another. I found them both in the filter media box swimming around. My aqua clear 20 has a lid on it. Granted I don't have a cover for my aquarium. After installing the prefilter, I still have all six neons. Also, the neons are actually green neons which are one of the smallest neons.
 
#16 ·
I was at work today talking about this and one of my buddies told me he witnessed his red tail shark swim right up the output stream of the HOB and into the reservoir area. That finally explained the disappearing fish for him. I laughed out loud when he said it, but it make a lot of sense. If you keep the water level in your tank up where it should be, there's really not that much of a lip that the water is flowing over into your tank. I've noticed a lot of fish like to play in the water flow and I can completely envision a fish swimming up the return into the HOB reservoir. Fish naturally traverse lots more challenging things than that in nature. I haven't used a HOB in a long time, so that possibility didn't occur to me. I'm glad he relived that one for me.
 
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