killed all fish with bad bio filter material

[Kevin R.]

I bought some swamp cooler filter material from home depot and thought it would work great as a filter material for my tank. after using it for a few hours tank water was green and all my fish were dead. I made a huge mistake. Not sure what they put in the fiter material for swamp coolers but not good for fish. warning to others, dont use this stuff.

[Bob Campbell]

http://chicoaquaponic.blogspot.com/2012/03/bell-siphon-my-conclusio...

Susie Gehri said:

Jon....I'd never heard of this maintenance!  Well then, now we know.  It happened again while we were in there this morning.  OK....so, when I pull the inside cover up (I'll call it the upstand cover?) it drains down about 3 inches and then just STAYS there draining whats coming in. Never fully dumping. Something must be plugged. So do you just ream out the inside of the siphon or do I need to totally remove all rock around it and clean it that way?

[Susie Gehri]

Thank you Bob!!!  You won't believe what we did today!!  Removed ALL rock around the siphon, ROOTS EVERYWHERE!!  We then made a "screen" to keep rocks AWAY from siphon.  The 'cage' we put around siphon, now allows space to clean out roots without having to make mountains "of rock"!  I'll show my husband your siphon website, and see if he understands it. I don't....but thats cause we built "Murry" siphons.  But I'm really excited to be in touch with someone that's half way figured out these difficult things!!!!!