leaving for a few weeks...what do I do about heat?

[Whitney]

Hi all,

My roommate and I are going out of town for a few weeks for the holidays and she wants to turn the heat down in our house to 62 degrees. I'm nervous about how that will affect my fishtank. I'll leave the heater on, of course, but will that be able to compensate for the dropped heat in the house?

[Lady Hobbs]

I don't know and it will depend on how good your heaters are. Keeping the heat up a bit but cost no more than running those heaters 24 hours, I bet. Perhaps you can compromise and set the heat to 68?

[jeffs99dime]

how soon are you leaving to go on vacation? if it's a couple days from now you could set the room temp to 62 and turn up the heater in your tank to compensate until you come back. you will be cold while you're still home but your fish won't be. also, i would turn heater in the tank up slowly!!! one other thing you could do it cover the tank completely with blankets to minimize heat loss and insulate the tank better

[Nautilus291]

If i were you i would turn the heat down to 62 before you leave to see how it affects your tank. If it stays pretty constant then you know you will be fine. Another thing is you could put a blanket over the tank to try to conserve heat.

It might be alittle cold for you, but if you do have problems during the test time at least you know you saved your fish.

[Nautilus291]

i must have been saying that the same time as you lol. sorry about that

[jeffs99dime]

great minds think alike. lol

[Whitney]

thanks for the responses....I went out today and purchased a new heater....I think that the two working together should be better than one on its own...right?

I'm going to start turning the heat down slowly too (I'd actually thought of that today, but it's good to have someone else suggest it as well).

I have a new question now though......

I decided to do a water change and cleaning today (this way it's close to my departure, but I'm still around for a couple of days, just in case)...and I noticed that my filter seems to be producing a very weak flow.....this has happened before, and I just rinse the sponges and everything was fine.....

So.....as before, I took the filter out and thoroughly rinsed out the sponges (which I did in tank water from the water change). When I replaced the filter, it ran well for a minute and then the water flow totally stopped.

I jiggled it a bit and water flow started again, this time, full force....a few minutes later, it stopped again and I can't get it going......

What's going on?

The filter is a "Fluval 4 Plus"...anyone familiar with that model?

[Nautilus291]

did you try cleaning around where the propellers are. Maybe theres dirt around it clogging it up, and its slowing it down. I dont know that model but the filter i have the propellers come right out and you can clean the assembly.

[Whitney]

ok....um.....this is odd....I just stuck my hand in to check and see if I can figure out where the propeller is and clean it.....and the water is flowing again.....but who knows for how long....

Thing is...I got this filter from someone else....so I don't have an instruction manuel or box to tell me how to use it.

[Nautilus291]

that sounds like it might be something clogging it to me. Maybe when you stuck your hand in there it loosened some stuff up. You should still see if you can try to get to it.

[Whitney]

.....and.....it's off again.....

I can't figure out where it can possibly be clogged

[Abbeys_Mom]

My advice, start from scratch. Take the filter off the tank and into your bathroom (or where ever), take all the part of the filter apart and clean them. Take the impeller blades out and clean them as well. When everything is squeaky clean, reassemble the filter and put it back on the tank. Fill it and plug it in. That way you have covered everything in one shot.