I was sitting here in my room and I looked over at my tank and the bubble pattern didn't seem right... my aquaclear filter had stopped pumping water!

I have no clue how long it had been stopped for, but the whole thing was dry! It couldn't have been more than an hour or two, I'm afraid my cycle is going to crash.

The case was hot, I've got new filters on order because I'm upgrading my tank as soon as they get here, so as soon as the new filters get cycled I won't be using this one anymore at all, but until then (10 days shipping) I've got no clue what to do.

I switched it off, refilled the pump and turned it back on and it started running fine again.

Is there anything I can do other than check it as often as possible?

Odd as I noticed the same exact thing with my aquaclear today as well which is only a month old. It was only a few minutes though...I filled it with water and its been fine every since. I wish I had more advice to give you. Hang in there...

That's really strange - the exact thing happened to me last week. But my params are all continuing to be stable, and nemo seems fine. Was there a full moon or something?
Dana.

Aquaclears will do that if the power was interupted or stopped for a while.They can also do that if the filter box is really clogged up and dirty.
Anytime that happens to me,I do a water change on a tank.I then take the filter,unplug it-pour any water out of it down the drain and rinse everything out in the bucket of fish water that I changed out. I put it all back together and then add some actual tank water to it.You really have to be careful just adding water to a filter that went dry. If it's been like that for a while,the water in the box can get stagnant and nasty,so you don't want to just start it back up with the water that was sitting in it as that could cause alot of nasty problems.

So then this might have been a result of the water change I did a few hours before the filter stopped?

I turn off the filter at the power bar when I do a water change, and then fill the box up with water from the tank and start it up again... at that point the filter was running fine.

Is there a bubble bar under the intake tube of your AquaClear? This can cause bubbles to be sucked in it and will cause it to stop. You should never place a bubble stone below the intake of any filter. This can cause some major damage. Also, if you fill theAC with water after it has been stopped for a while and it is still hot, it can cause the casing to crack because of the shock from hot to cool. You should unplug it to cool and then restart it. I have had this happen to my AC and that is why I only use Millennium or Penguin. The new Penguins now restart after backsiphoning due to a power outage.

Wow! I had no idea that filters could be so tempermental! Thanks for the info - i do have a bubbler close to the intake tube of my filter! I will move it right now!
Dana.

Ahah! I thought that might be a culprit! I have an airstone that is about six inches away from the filter, but the filter had slid over a bit, and so had the air stone... I was just ripe for malfunction.

The new filters I have on order are penguins. I'm upgrading to a 40 gallon (had originally intended to go larger) and I got a 350 and a 150... so as soon as they are colonized enough to hold the cycle, I'll let the aquaclear hang out in my emergency box.

I have an aquaclear, I stopped using it because it would not re-start after a power failure. I thought that would be bad if i was not home to notice.