damselfish | On Occasion of a Charitable Donation From One's Grandmother

I sent this to my grandmother on Monday:Dear Dr. [Redacted],

With your generous donation of one (1) canister filter, you have granted 13 underprivileged fish the opportunity to graduate to a cleaner aquarium system. No longer will they have to wonder when the rubber band holding the intake motor will break, sucking one of them into the impeller. No longer will they have to suffer the injustice of a rattling HOB and a blurbling overflow.

It was all thanks to you.

Sincerely,
The Charitable Association For a Less Ugly Aquarium In Sam's Living Room

I promptly forgot about it and sat back on my laurels to admire my handiwork. Then in the morning I got:

I am deeply gratified that my donation was put to such a wonderful use. The result (as pictured in your email) is beautiful and much appreciated.
Keep up the inspiring and dedicated work.

Sincerely,
[Redacted], M.D.

I have maybe had a case of the sillies all week, but fortunately grandma knows how to respond to that.

Anyway. I now have a canister filter on my aquarium, which is a Big Deal since it cost almost half of what the entire aquarium cost me.

About an hour after I make my post about the Fluval Chi, I hear a thunk.

Thunk is never a sound you want to hear in your own home.

I look up and see that it's the rubber band I used to attach the motor to one of my filters; the motor is still running, and I scramble over to turn it off. One of the mollies drifts close to the filter intake and I am all NOOOOO I'LL SAAAAVE YOOOOUUUU in slow motion, fearing the molly will be made into sushi-- in retrospect, the impeller sucks water through of the intake tube and pushes it out and up into the filter box, so the worst that'd happen is the molly gets blown away rather than sucked in. But at the moment I was freaked out about killing a fish in a spectacularly gruesome manner.

I tried to attach it with another rubber band, but it was too big and just couldn't hold the motor in place. I ran two 55 Aqueons (you can see where the motor attaches on the bottom of the filter), so I still had a filter running, even if it was only rated for 55. I'd been planning on getting a canister anyway, but due to cost, I wanted to wait and hope a sale came up. The Aqueons are good, but the motor snaps on with a plastic clip that breaks off pretty easily. Like if you set the filter down too hard (oops!) Since the intake tube was also broken, I figured it was time to bite the bullet and start going after the better, more expensive equipment like I'd been planning on doing when I got the job that would bring me fame and fortune. One day.

I called my grandmother. With the okay, I did some research and came up with a Fluval for $220 and a Marineland for $200 at Petsmart, and went to my LFS to see what they had. They recommended a Cascade 1200 for $200, and I spent a while Googling around because I'd never heard of it. The reviews were meh, some people thought it was awesome and some thought it was terribad and many felt it did an adequate job but not as good as filters that're twice as expensive or filters with hard to come by parts. But that's the way of filter reviews, the Marineland and the Fluval were also mixed, and the bad Fluval reviews were really awful while the good were sterling. I wanted to save some money, and since the guys weren't upselling me-- he couldn't muster more than a shrug for the Fluval at $230, I picked it. A lot of reviews complain that the water can bypass the filtration media, and I see how that might be possible. Still, it's rated for 150 gallons and the two Aqueons did 110, so technically even with bypass it should still have better turnover and more through the filter.

Behold, the little garbage can with bento trays inside! The fact that it's clear sold me, a little, versus the opaque ones that look even more like trash cans.

Finally I was done, and Pocket Healer marveled, "It looks so bad-ass. That's awesome."

I was pretty taken with the simplicity of it, too and we both looked on as I fed the fish.

Kindly ignore the marks on the glass, I've since wiped it down. But here's what it looks like-- two simple gray/black bars along the back. You can see the Aqueon intake on the left side, looking more obtrusive.

Two days in and there's a lot of particulate in the water, and despite running the other Aqueon it's not clearing up.

Usually I shrink down my pics, but I've cropped this one, so it's grainy but you can see the white bits floating in the water.

With the Aqueons the water was crystal clear, so I'm trying to figure out what's going wrong. A canister is supposed to be the best kind of filter, but all it does is blow around this particulate. Is it sucking it up and blowing it out, or just circulating it in a cyclone inside the aquarium? Is the intake just badly placed and not picking up on the junk?