It was a ruff night for fluffy and me. tonight i woke up to a faulty filter again
so I unpluged everything and was going to unplug the heater when i saw fluffy sliding/falling down the side of the tank onto the floor:eek3: after a couple failed attempts to pick up a slimy squirmy fluffy by hand I used some paper towels to get him into the tank. It turns out the filter had stopped working because i had left the prefilter in too long. I switched it out and stared at the tank for an hour or two and fluffy didn't show any signed of stress.
In an ideal world i would have tested the water rite rite after putting fluffy back and replacing the filter but for whatever reason I didn't. Now iv tested the water and it shows
nitrates:15 (higher than usual but shouldn't be a problem)
nitrites:0
ammonia:0
i had checked the water on Sunday and the results where the same with nitrates closer to 10. Monday i did a water change.
so assuming fluffy left because of poor water quality im guessing the dirty prefilter may have caused an ammonia spike because it drastically lowered the effectiveness of the filter. this seems unlikely though because as soon as the filter malfunctions it makes noise and i wake up :/
SundayI also got him a new piece of aquarium decor made in china (hand painted). I removed the pot in case it was painted with a lead based paint. im doing another small water change for safety.