Fluval 304 Leak

[Guest]

I thought I remembered reading a post about this, but I couldn't find anything.
I cleaned my fluval 304 today and put it back under the aquarium. I didn't bother making sure it wasn't leaking at that time. I left for a few hours and when I came home, I lost about 4 gallons from my 75 gal tank. Apparently, the water was leaking from under the one handle out of a small hole. There are four of these holes on the canister. One on each corner of the indentations where the handles are. I have owned this particular filter for nearly a year now and haven't had any problems and I'm pretty sure that I had everything assembled correctly. Any thoughts or experiences that might shed some light on this?

 

[Guest]

Thanks everybody for looking, but I think I solved the problem. I must have bumped the oring slightly out of place when I was doing things in a haste. This caused the slow leak. I have been using it ever since leak free since I took it apart and reassembled. I also used some petroleum jelly to lubricate the orings. Hopefully this isn't harmful to anything living inside.

 

[gear-head]

Not petroleum jelly! It's not harmfull to fishies or inverts, but it will break down the rubber on the o-ring. There's a silicone gel you can get (I think Big Al's has it) which is designed for seals (rubber o-rings, not sardine eating aquatic mammals!).

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the input. I will pick some up the next time I place an order from Big Als. I ordered some orings because the leak came back. This too did not solve the problem. I finally found the cause though, in case anyone's interested. I must have pushed too hard to get the motor back in place after the cleaning. There was a 1" hair line crack near the left handle. It was so small that I had to shine a light on it to see it, but it was enough to cause a gph leak.

 

[Guest]

Would dialectric compound work ok? This is what is used on electrical conections or would that be toxic to the fish?