A New Beginning

[Galaxie]

Something isn't adding up here. I've never had a healthy fish get sucked up by a filter (and I used up to 20x filtering on my tanks). I've even witnessed 1/4-inch swordtail fry happily swimming in proximity to a 265 gph ViaAqua cannister intake. Can you offer any more details on how you originally cycled your tank? What was your ammonia source and what were the levels of ammonia in ppm for the cycling process?

Here is a link about cycling. This should be required reading for any aquarist:
Link to Cycling a Tank article

Also, Ich doesn't kill in 2 hours. Something else must be affecting the fish.

A couple basics....

-when you clean the filter media, be sure to use water from the tank or dechlorinated water.
-when you change water, the water you add must be exactly the same temp as the aquarium water. A couple degree variation is acceptable, but any moderate temp change could shock and kill the fish within a couple hours.
-add fish to any new tank slowly. One or two at a time, depending on the size of the tank and fish.

Sorry for your bad experience on the first round there, but an improperly cycled tank is susceptible to new-tank syndrome...which is what I suspect happened. You said after you added "a community" of fish, in 2 months they started dying. 2 months is about the length of time it takes for either ammonia or nitrite to reach highly toxic levels.

 

[Debisbooked]

I have used Hagen's Fluval 2 plus on my 10g tank with great success - there is no way any fish of any size can be sucked up inside. There are four Fluval Pluses geared for various tank sizes, I would think a 3 or 4 would work for your size tank. I did clean the filter sponges with untreated tap water once, killing much beneficial bacteria, which meant my tank went through a mini-cycle, which was bad for my fish. I learned my lesson and now only rinse the filters in used aquarium water. I have not changed the filter sponges in several months, BTW. With occasional rinsing they don't seem to need changing all that much unless one has fish that create a mess, like plecos. The downside to these filters is that they go inside the tank and can be difficult to disguise, if one cares about such things. Here is a web page you can look at. The web page is from England but they are sold here in America and on Ebay. Welcome back to the hobby, Jason78. I'm sure you'll find plenty of help on this site to get started properly.


http://www.hagen.com/uk/publicity/aquatic/fluval_underwater.html

 

[TKOS]

I woudl keep the filter. As many have said it wasn't the culprit in the death. My betta hangs out around my Aquaclear Mini with no problems. I would test the water, do water changes and follow the advice given. It is pretty good stuff.