Luananeko
Aquarium Advice Addict
I've used HOB filters almost my whole life, so I'm a bit of a noobie on canister filters... I picked up a Rena Filstar XP3 filter about 2 months back and it had a nice strong flow at first. Now it barely agitates the water surface at all... Is that normal?
The only thing I can figure is that maybe I have the media baskets too full? The filter shipped with only a small handful of the ceramic bio tubes and the foam bio stars, two thick foam pads, one small foam pad, and a bag of carbon. It looked way too empty in the baskets so I added enough ceramic bio tubes to completely fill the middle basket, part of the top basket, and added in polyfil to stuff the rest of the top basket. I've read that the flow rate can slow as the media gets full of gunk but I've rinsed out the polyfil and foam in the top basket thoroughly (in tank water of course) and it still doesn't have much flow. I stick my hand right at the spray bar exit and barely feel the water moving out of it.
I'm tempted to put my old Marineland Emperor 400 HOB filter back onto the tank to keep the oxygen levels where I want them!
The only thing I can figure is that maybe I have the media baskets too full? The filter shipped with only a small handful of the ceramic bio tubes and the foam bio stars, two thick foam pads, one small foam pad, and a bag of carbon. It looked way too empty in the baskets so I added enough ceramic bio tubes to completely fill the middle basket, part of the top basket, and added in polyfil to stuff the rest of the top basket. I've read that the flow rate can slow as the media gets full of gunk but I've rinsed out the polyfil and foam in the top basket thoroughly (in tank water of course) and it still doesn't have much flow. I stick my hand right at the spray bar exit and barely feel the water moving out of it.
I'm tempted to put my old Marineland Emperor 400 HOB filter back onto the tank to keep the oxygen levels where I want them!