Hello,
I joined here today to warn you about a serious issue I have experienced that just wiped out my entire aquarium and KILLED my fish and may have harmed me.

I have a tiny (3 or 5 gal I think?) bow front that I acquired when my girlfriend left college. she bought it about 3 years ago from wal-mart and I have been maintaining it since, doing filter changes and such, as when I was little I had a 10 gal tank I took care of and understood how to keep it up.

This morning, I was woken up at around 2:30 am by a loud noise, bright flash, and a lot of smoke that smelled only like an electrical fire could (I am an electronics tinkerer so im no rookie to this smell) in my bedroom where I keep my aquarium. I jumped out of bed, flipped on the light, found the source, and ran and pulled the filter plug. Being woken up suddenly out of a sound sleep by a possible electrical fire in your sleeping space is horrific enough as it is. after I calmed down from feeling like I could've burned, pulling the filter, and venting what I could, I went back to sleep.

this morning, I woke up, the aquarium light was on, my fish were twitching and dying. the water reeks of the burnt electrical smell. A sad morning. the room still smells heavily of burnt electrical. I took the filter outside, and pulled it apart. the rotor seized overnight, must've overheated the motor, causing it to melt down internally until the internal coils reached thermal runaway and caused the light and smoke show and wiped out my fish. I am missing a fish right now, and I am seriously considering it to be vaporized.

this was one of the small tetra whisper filters, the old style one, internal power filter, it has a yellow tag on the plug with a warning not to unplug it, similar to the new model except for the newer model having a snap-on bottom half with a pump made for the specific application, it has the square pump on the bottom with the slide away bottom half and has an outlet on the far end of the top, that from what I have seen is very similar to what is used in small decorative yard fountains and such. I have seen those pumps seize too, but nothing along the lines of the catastrophic failure that this did.

I am no expert, but I would recommend if you own one of these filters unplugging it, removing it, and buying something else, before your filter decides it has had enough and wipes your aquarium.

Interesting.I did have two of those and had no issues myself with them.Sorry about your loss.I have a newer one in my 20 gallon but its unplugged at the moment as I have betta fry all over the place.

__________________
http://bountifulbettas.blogspot.com/

"Come to the dark side....we have cookies...and filters/heaters/and water changes!"

well, I spoke too soon... I have one survivor, so far, a red serpae tetra. I emptied the entire tank, flushed the gravel through a strainer under the tub faucet, mixing it around, I cleaned every item in the tank, I put in the new filter (whisper 10i) and it is all running along, the smell is going away, the water is clear, and the red serpae is in a tupperware container next to the tank with the airstone and fresh water and seems much happier now. hopefully he stays that way.

yes, this is an unfortunate event, I have done googling on the subject and have found that it has happened a few times to other people. this newer one seems to have fixed the problem as they didnt slap together off-the-shelf parts and purpose built the pump into the filter assembly.