Cascade 1000

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kallmond

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Oct 21, 2009
790
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Hanover, PA
I have a Cascade 1000 that came with a freecycle.org 55gallon setup. When i open the top of the canister, it stinks to holy badness. This is the smell of all things bad kept in a warm moist sealed environment for months and months.

The guy didn't say why he got out of fish-keeping, but if I were a betting man I'd say he had 1 too many die-offs and after the last one he (mostly) drained everything threw it all in the tank and stuck it in his garage for 6 months.

How do I clean this thing? I was thinking of filling my tub with hot (barely) soapy water and running it through for a day or so, then rinsing everything and running it on non-soapy water for another day. (with several water changes).

I'm tempted to bleach everything I can get my hands on and then rinse/soak it all for a few days. The stink is terrible.
 
HAHA... that's why it was free. I would not recommend bleach, but definitely soak it in hot water, maybe whip it down with some vinegar.
 
Thats exactly why its free :)

I'm willing to put in the work to restore the tank to nice condition, because I have wayyy more time than money. But wow, let that be a lesson. Rinse things! don't store them sealed up!

Its currently humming happily away circulating the water in my bath tub.

I took it all apart, scrubbed all the trays and inside the canister with Dawn. I took out the impeller and scrubbed out the housing and all the insides of the canister as well. Rinsed everything in hot water.

I filled my tub with hot water, put everything together, plugged it in and right after priming it spit out huge green gobs of stinking crap. It looked like an elephant with a sinus infection sneezed in my tub. And the smell.. omg. I have a 2 year old who has dropped some of the top 10 worst smells on me.. this made those diapers smell like roses. I wonder if a fish had gotten sucked into the pump...

So, I changed the water in the tub, hosed out all the elephant snot and re-filled the tub. This time much less green goo. We'll see how the water looks in the AM.

Vinegar is a good idea, I think i'll go dump a gallon in the tub.

Has anyone used these cannisters before? Is it even worth all this trouble? I see people talk about fluval and eheim all the time but i've never seen mention of this brand. Which makes me think its probably the walmart brand.
 
Its got a reputation as a decent bargain filter. I see people compare it to the Rena XP's all the time, in fact I'm probably gonna get one for my planted tank for x-mas.
 
This cascade 1000 says its rated for tanks up to 100 gallons. Its going on a 55.
Aquaclear 110 says its rated for aquariums up to 110 gallons.

210 gallons 'worth of' filtration for a 55? I'm all for redundancy, but I'm going to be moving 4 2 - 3 inch fish to it.
 
I have a Cascade 1000 that came with the 65g that I purchased. It was gross! You can tell the guy scrubbed his tank walls down and let the filter clean it up on a regular basis.

I cleaned it out with hot water and vinegar, put in all new sponge, media and pads. Been running great for 7 weeks now.

I am just getting around to cleaning it out this weekend so I will see what I have growing in mine. I hope its not too bad; I do weekly water changes of 20g and do not overfeed. We shall see what kind of a stink I'm in for.
 
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