try putting and air stone in there too.........are you running the lights all the time? 2-3 hours a couple times a day is plenty in the begining, how often are you or your son feeding {is he feeding anything other than fishfood??lol it happens}

it sounds like your water is getting stagnent, get it moveing around and that smell should go away

Boss

The Tetra 40 is an air pump that I bought to get the water moving in the tank. I just placed it yesterday. I have a fish that my son calls Mr.Girafee (Nimbochromis venustus) that is always hiding, doesn't want to eat, and does not mingle with others. Is he sick? Or is he, in his last bubbles?

Just got a few Qs, might help me answer some of yours. What size is the tank? Did you rinse the gravel/rocks/plants? Did you rinse the media before putting it in the filter?

The whisper EX70 is quoted at 340gph, which means it probably pushes closer to 300gph with media and such in it (i know the media inserts for this include carbon..as I have an EX30 on my gf's 10gal). Carbon filters certain wastes and chemicals and generally will remove almost any fishy odor from a tank if used in enough quantity. Its agreed on by most aquarists that the minimum water flow in a tank should be 7x the volume of your tank. 7x37=259, so filtering 300gph should be more then adequate in perhaps a community environment, but it wouldn't hurt to add supplemental filtration or water movement (powerhead) since some of your fish may be messy.

Unlike other carbon media inserts I don't think the whisper ones have to be rinsed. With other kinds they tell you to rinse it to remove residual dust and such but it seems tetra found a way to remove that before getting it into the foam floss insert.