Penguin 100 frustration

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hamburgler

Aquarium Advice Activist
Joined
Jun 7, 2006
Messages
100
Every morning i notice this filter has stopped. All i have to do is take part, and reassemble the impeller housing and it works fine again. But then there is quite a bit of flossy looking material floating around the tank. I dont see how it is getting clogged. When i take it apart it looks clear and the tank has only been running for a week.

Any ideas? I'm ready to get the POS of my tank.
 
i dont condone penguins anymore, i use to love them, but it turns out the bio wheel area isnt big enough to clean up that much nitreites and amonia like it says, its kinda a scam.

are you still using store bought cartridges? or did you modify them for a homemade version so you dont have to keep buying them.

check the propeller, and the engine, probably some cotton made its way into eiether one, as well as a pebble (given its homemade)

otherwise how long have you hade it?
 
flossy looking material? does it appear to be algea? is so you may just need to clean the intake tube with a brush.
 
It hasnt been running for more than a week. To get it to work each time i take everything apart and fill it back up, and its fine.

But i do notice each time it stops working the filter box is almost empty, and then i pick the filter up and all the water comes out the intake. So the pump stops as well.

I do not notice anything clogged, its all looks brand new (which it is).
 
is there an airstone running underneath it?

is the water level in the tank high enough?
 
if it's new, take it back and get a different one, but keep the media. some things aren't worth messing with.
 
There is an airstone in the tank but its on the other side of the tank (10g).

The water level is right around the rim of the tank (looking from the outside). The filter intake is submersed a good 6 or 7 inches.

I was considering taking it back but it came as a part of a marineland kit that i got for cheap at the shop i work at. Plus i already switched out the hood so i hesitate having to get a new filter but ill look into it.

BTW it went from doing it once a day, usually overnight. To every few days so maybe its getting better?
 
the problem with this this kind of a stop-gap arrangement would be that, in case you forgot to check, and the filter was off, you'd lose the bacteria, and the tank would undergo a drastic ammonia build-up. i recommend getting a new one.
 
marineland power filters are a very good filters

i have a 75G Marineland 350 Dual Bio-wheel filter and couldnt be more happy with it. never had a problem with it.

when i had my 30g marineland i had to apply lots of pressure on the intkae tube so that it would suck up the water, that may be your problem the inbtake tube pops up a tad bit and it loses its suction.

now i have this 350 on my 29g so it has tons of biological filteration
 
SHIFT_Unique said:
when i had my 30g marineland i had to apply lots of pressure on the intkae tube so that it would suck up the water, that may be your problem the inbtake tube pops up a tad bit and it loses its suction.

That seems to be the problem. Did you do anything to fix it permanently?
 
ductape solves all problems! =0)

seriously, you could use some marine epoxy if you don't plan to take it apart again (however this could have some problems associated with it...especially for maintence)

Is there a piece of plasting the pinches it causing it to not stay down? if so you could just dremel a bit off of that plastic.

If possible try and identify what is causing it and take a picture to see if any of us can come up possible solutions.
 
I may try some duct tape and see what happens, i'll work on getting a pic up to.

It doesnt seem to come noticably loose, i just take it apart and put it back together and it works.
 
i just firmly pressed down on if for a couple minutes after it regained suction and it was fine and never stopped
 
hamburgler said:
I may try some duct tape and see what happens, i'll work on getting a pic up to.

It doesnt seem to come noticably loose, i just take it apart and put it back together and it works.

I was saying duct tape in jest, I'd be careful as there may be toxin's in the glue it uses.
 
I just dumped my Penguin 150's BIO-Wheel (mine was stopping as well, but not as badly as yours) and added a second filter to act as a bio-filter instead. So far its working well.
 
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