More Peppermints!

I received a call from a friend while I was at the Wildcat's game yesterday (the wildcats thrashed the slingers btw!). He was visiting an aquarium store in Southern River and they were selling small peppermints for $20 each!!! $20!! Apparently they were discounted 50% to make way for new stock...so... obviously I got greedy and told my pal to buy me 5 more.

Now, I just need to work out where to put them! I'd been trying to prep Tank 3 since Saturday, but have run into one major hiccup. Namely the filter. A 4yr old Eheim 2026 Filter that I set up on Saturday and seemed to start off ok. But about 2 hours later, I noticed dripping at the bottom cabinet of the tank and found that the base of the cabinet was flooded with water... due to a dripping leak from somewhere at the top of the filter. Oh Sh#t!!! *I thought to myself*... and quickly turned off the power at the wall and unplugged the extension board. Let this be a lesson to all you fishy ppl.... always keep your power plugs in a position that will keep it dry in the event of a major flood!! and never ever touch the filter or water until you have turned the power off and disconnected it from the mains.

Anyway, my brother-in-law tried rubbing some Eheim gel (the tube came with the filter when I bought it) onto the main O-ring seal between the head and the filter box thinking that was where the leak was coming from... and we plugged it back in and tried again. But almost immediately the leak started dripping again quite rapidly. So with not much of a clue as to how these filters work internally, I disconnected the whole setup, packed it into the car and took off for Vebas first thing on Sunday morning.

The guys at the shop were very helpful and friendly and almost immediately came to the conclusion that a worn-out o-ring at the filter head was causing the problem. It appeared to be a problem with the o-ring at the hose-end of the connection. So we changed those. Total cost $6.60 for 2 o-rings... which seemed reasonable.. actually quite cheap considering the amount of time they spent looking at it... and the dread that I thought something worse was wrong with the filter.

Anyway, after the o-ring was changed, we plugged it back in and tested the filter on one of their planted aquariums. We left it running for a good 15-20 mins. Allaleuyah! No leaks!! So,.. thanking the guys profusely, I drove home in a jolly good mood and even decided to do a u-turn to maccas to pickup some surprise breakfast for my beautiful wife who was probably still in bed sound asleep.

Well... I got home and plugged the filter in,.. this time placing it in a rectangular bucket to catch any leaks ...and it started off well ...didn't look like any water was dripping.

So I ate breakfast with my wife who was actually already awake in the kitchen and preparing breakfast for me... hehe so much for my idea of a surprise by waking her up with the smell of maccas wafting into the bedroom.. lol..

Anyway, we had breakfast.. and after about an hour, I went back to check on the tank.. and holy cr#p!!! it was still leaking.. although this time the leak was significantly slower and dripping under the plastic bits of the filter.. which is why I didn't notice it at the start.

So back to Vebas it went. This time I left it there because they were quite busy with customers by that time of day... Sunday's are always busy at that place.

..Well now.., I just got the call from them as I was typing away on this blog during my lunch and it looks like its been fixed. The problem appears to have been the double tap that connects to the hose... some plastic bits were found broken on the inside. Go figure... I must have damaged it at some stage from rough handling or a hard bump when we were moving house (more likely cause).. hard to tell. Anyway, they swapped it with a new one and it appears to not be leaking anymore. Cost of the new double-tap was $55. So all up it'll have cost me $61.60 to fix the leak. Still reasonable I guess... as long as it ain't going to flood my house I'll be happy.

Will head down to pick it up later today. Yippee. The 10 peppermints will finally get to move into their new home sometime soonish.

I still need to get the substrate for the new tank and all the plants and driftwood for the final setup. Well actually, a 'friend of a friend' has offerred his services to aquascape for me in return for entering the tank in a competition. So that will be interesting... I still need to discuss the finer details with him first but it'll be good to see what he can do. He already setup one of my friend's tanks and it looks awesome!