Make sure your canister is running!

[cassharper]

So I was going to clean my Red Ear Slider tank (shaddup, he's still small!) and was messing around with the cords. I had mislabeled them a few months ago and never caught it. I plug in what I thought was an unplugged heater, and a TERRIBLE sulfur smell quickly fills the room.

Apparently my "heater" was a canister filter that I used primarily for bio filtration that had been unplugged for a few weeks.

Anoxic Bacteria+2 weeks=Dead Feeder Guppy population in a matter of seconds!

Luckily I pulled the RES out and no damage was done, but I kinda liked the guppies!

Morale: Make sure you label the cords right and don't be stupid!

 

[USMCtanker]

ouch that sucks, dont feel bad i do dumb stuff like that daily, dont even get me started lol

 

[japes]

I accidentally blocked and stopped the siphon on my smaller canister when doing a huge decor rearrange the other day. I completely didn't realise that it wasn't flowing (I've got two canisters on the tank and its the lower flow of the two) and I could hear the impeller bouncing around and making a humming sound but I didn't catch on.

I'm cleaning my tank thinking, "What the hell is that noise - is next door doing some drilling or mowing the lawn or something?", then I caught on when I stuck my boofhead into the cabinet to do something with the plugs. No harm done thankfully.

 

[DaveB]

I'm going to bump this old thread because the exact same thing happened to me. I don't know if I just forgot to plug it back in after the last WC or maybe my dog kicked it out from the plug, but one of my two FX5s wasn't running on my 135. Stupidly, I plugged it back in. For all I know it was unplugged for 2 weeks. Immediately the room smelled awful and the fish started really stressing out.

I'm in the middle of what I expect to be an 80% water change now, and since the media is dead anyway I'm just going to rinse it good in tap water. Hopefully I won't lose any fish. This is my good South American tank so I'll be devastated if I lose anyone.

But yeah - make sure your filters are plugged in... and if they aren't, be careful about turning them back on!