FIlter Maintenance

Had a couple come into the store today looking to get a water test done on their fishtank.
As it was doing great...but then suddenly their fish started dying off and they've been struggling with higher nitrates in their tank for the past month or so. 

And they've done everything they can think of, half water changes, treatments, and nothing will get those levels lower.

So with a bit of conversation....I finally asked them when they had last changed their filter.
Because sometimes the cartridges could cause issues with the tanks and it's about the only thing I could think of.
Though mostly I was checking to see if a) they'd changed them recently and b) if they had removed them to do the treatments.

However, it turned out that they didn't have the over the back filter.
No.
They had a canister filter.
Which I'm not as familiar with but familiar with enough to ask them when they had last changed out like the carbon with in it as the carbon in the filter is only good for so long and if that stops working...the tank can often get dirtier quicker.

*exhales*
Apparently they haven't touched the canister filter itself in like....a year. 

So it makes a lot of sense as to why their tank would suddenly go downhill and why they're struggling to get the nitrates down lower.

My guess is part of the issue is that they need to clean out/replace most of their components.

Like I get it that the canister filter is easy to forget to maintain. We had one in our goldfish display tank when we still had display tanks at work and even we would forget to maintain the thing until six or so months later. *shakes head*

In any case.
I instructed the couple to go clean out their filter and see if that helped their nitrate levels any.
Because yah...a clean filter can do wonders for helping tanks do well. 

-Sarnic Dirchi