BEWARE! Power Sweep 228 design flaw!

Hello all. Please forgive my first post if anything is done incorrectly. I haven't had an aquarium in over 10 years and recently got back into the hobby with a 75 Gallon fresh water setup. My setup contains two Power Sweep 228's from Zoo Med. Overall I like the powerhead but I recently discovered an issue they have. If all you have are fish then they seem to be fine. What I found out the hard way was that they have a very powerful suction force present around the little wheel that you use to control water flow. I came home and my African Dwarf Frog had gotten his entire back leg sucked into the small opening at the ends of the wheel. Since I only had one frog I didn't do anything about it. Today I discovered however that one of my snails had also gotten sucked into this crevice. Since I leave them on high flow I plan to silicone around the wheel. That way I should be able to keep them and remove the silicone for cleaning and then silicone it back afterwards. I sent ZooMed and email and they claim they ae going to look into it. Just in case they don't I wanted to warn others to check theirs. Since both of mine have this suction I can only assume it wasn't just one defective unit. One way to tell is if you have lot's of plant and food debris sucking itself to the bottom seam of the unit near the flow wheel. Thank you.

ecvjohn said:

I have one in my tank and it stays clean. Try backing your wheel off just a hair ,by looking at the design this should seal the tiny gap thats creating the suction at that point. Next time you do a water change pull the unit out and look at the bottom intake and you'll see what I mean.

A little off topic but do you have trouble restarting your sweeps(getting air/water to flow) after a water change?

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Seems to depend. Somedays they will start right back and other days one will not turn at all. No matter how much I try to jump start it nothing works. Then when I drain the water down below it it might perk back up once te water returns. The air is even harder to predict. Seems to depend on having the exact right water height. A little low or high and the air doesn't work. Sometimes I even have to 'blow' in the filter to get it primed.

I think I am going to go ahead and replace them if I can find another good model that has a sweeping motion. It looks like mine is even sucking debris in at the bottom of the wheel. I'll try to enclose a pic. I could probably lower the flow rate but I actually want to have the higher rate.

Leopardess said:

Frogs shouldn't be used in setups like that, for partly exactly the reason you mention. They don't do well around current or anything with strong suction. They are also not suitable for large tanks. Please read the article linked in my signature.

Thanks for the warning though and welcome to the tank

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UPDATE: I replaced my 228's with two Penguin 1140's. I miss the rotating powerhead but these are smaller, quieter, more GPH and have adjustable aeration. They are also missing a flow control but I think it is worth it. After writing the original article my 228's also sucked in two small snails. Sucked one right out of his shell. It was then that I discovered the hollow bottom of the 228 flow control wheel also 'sucks' (No pun intended).


Thanks for the article. The feeding is the main reason I am thinking about leaving them out. Mine seemed to do ok with the current. The hardest thing was feeding them the specialized food before the fish ate it. Because of this I kept overfeeding them and that is probably part of what led to my Nitrite crash. I had to do three 50% changes to get the levels out of danger territory. Luckily I only lost one fish out of it. Of course now I am restarting the break in period from scratch. Added a dose of Cycle this time and keeping the feeding in check. It's amazing what has changed since my last tank back in the late 80's.