FX5 WARNING!!!

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
H

He_Man_81

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Sep 4, 2005
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Memphis
The FX5 is a great filter, and keeps the water quality great, but i've got one warning, and this is from PERSONAL EXPERIENCE... Make sure that at least once a week, you tighten the locks on the top of the filter... I came home from work last week to my 150 about 5" lower than it was when i went to work. :eek: I immediately dropped everything and ran to the tank and was greeted to a wonderful squish about 2 feet from the tank.... :swear: The culprit was my less than 4 month old FX5!!! It was dripping at a slow but steady rate from the rim. i'm not real sure (but i am blaming them) if it's my g/f's cat or kitten, but the screws that keep the top on were loose enough for the leak. I do think this filter is great, it's absolutely amazing compared to a Cascade from Penn-Plex... But i have noticed that the screws do need to be tightened after some time...

Sorry about no pics of the damage or of the clean-up, but the carpet was more at hand than the dig cam..... :)

Just a warning!!!
 
Thanks for the warning. Will keep an eye on that when I get mine.
 
Thanks for the heads up. Did you try to contact fluval? They may no of the problem and have a fix for FX5 owners.
 
Hhmmmm, I have one of these and have no problems to report so far....thanks for the head's up though...I'll keep my eye on those bolts now ;)

--Brian
 
Ya I see the problem there, and just think, what happens if you accidentally tighten too much also. Crack, no more filter until its fixed, dont like the screw idea, some of us have an idea what tight is and others may think its not tight enough or too tight. Ugh, Thats a problem Im not willing to deal with. We all know water doesnt compress so if there is water at the seal, chance of cracking is likely to happen. Just to give an idea how easy it is to do, I had a 65 Mustang and I was changing the thermostat. I put the thermo in and put the houing on, I started to tighten down the screws and all of a sudden the intake cracked. Holy SH*T! Well I backed out the screws to find water behind the bolt holes, there was no where for the little amount of water to go except through a crack that it created. Again, water doesnt compress and there you have it, so watch out when tightening anything with water involved. And yes I will be getting an FX5, they are too irrisistable
 
Yes I agree, I have 2 FX5's and have noticed the clamps do work a little loose, the problem here is that when they effectively copied the old Eheim "bucket" filters (the 2234 and 2260) although they are using the same idea of the locking brackets, eith the Eheim there was also a large "lip" they went over prior to tightening. I don'y know if they had to omit that feature perhaps due to legal matters, copyright etc with regard to Eheim.
 
Cant see this as a large scale problem -sorry....no way for these screws to loosen up after you tightened them. If you seat the top correctly, the filter dosent viberate to the point of backing off the screws.
 
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