Aquaclear 70 sponge pushing up even after clean?

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Daven

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May 20, 2015
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Saskatchewan (Canada)
On my girlfriends 29 gallon we run an aquaclear 70 with the regular sponge and biomax only, as well as a sponge cut to fit over the inlet as a prefilter. Her sponge is only a month or so old and she rinses it in tank water every water change, not squeezing it to keep the BB. This water change i helped her and once we fired back up the filter, the one side started to float up and i cannot keep it from doing so. It looked pretty clean throughout, and like i said it isnt very old, but i still syphoned out some more water to try squeezing it out a bit this time. We got some finer crud this time, where earlier lifting it up and submerging it over and over to rinse didnt really dirty the water at all. But even after that it is still floating up a bit, although not pushing up enough to lift the lid so maybe it is still able to filter effectively. The filter basket gets secured on the side closest to the inlet tube, but there is nothing to hold it on the other side where it floats. Im not sure if there was at some point something to kind of click it in place, but i am surprised that it is floating like this as i have a total of 5 other AC filters and never had this issue unless i was gone for a while and tank maitnence was neglected. And even then the filter looked more obviously dirty and clogged. It could be clogged, but the sponge looks real light like a new one should and the prefilter traps the majority of it first as well.

Any thoughts? Im confused as it shouldnt be clogged considering the age and fact that i even squeezed it out to try and resolve this.
 
Any chance there were air bubbles in the sponge (causing resistance)?
Since you are not running carbon you could always add more ceramic media to fill the void and add weight.


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I have found that sponges shrink or compress over time and apply less pressure to the side(got a few Aqua clears).
Sometimes a new sponge or something to take up space (on side far from pump) can help..
 
Well I guess possibly since it obviously had to be transferred to the filter. But nothing has changed from how I always do my maintenance. I didn't think the biomedia would accumulated much weight to help? I guess I could add some more


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The extra bio media I used was the larger noodle type and not the gravel size pieces in the bag. The larger pieces are much heavier. Fishing line can be threaded through to holes and tied to the last noodle making an easy to retrieve "string" of ceramic media.


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