G6 low flow rate after cleaning

[ShrinkMD]

I finally broke down my G6 for a thorough cleaning, after about a year or so of operation, and cleaned large amounts of brown slime out of the filter. I cleaned one basket, and left slime in the other two, since I was afraid to wipe out my bacteria. I also cleaned the impeller.

Odd thing is, now my filter won't go to 100% flow rate. I have the same two cartridges as before, and clean them the same, letting them dry in the sun to kill the bacteria and whiten them up, then rinse and scrub in dechlorinated water. As far as I know, I put the impeller back together correctly. It's not making any strange noises or anything, but it isn't going to 100%. It also is not saying "fliter recalibrating" which is what it always used to say before when I'd plug it back in after a water change.

Any ideas? I bought some foodsafe silicone grease, and I plan on rubbing that on the O ring gasket seal as well as the O ring on the impeller. Does it sound like I just need a new impeller or filter cartridge? Or is there some way to reset the filter for the flow rate?

Thanks!

 

[FreshyFresh]

If it's pumping water, not leaking, nor making any odd noises, those are great things.

As far as not having the flow rate it did, I think it would have something to do with the media.

I'm not familiar with hi tech models with instrumentation on them and fancy displays though.

It would be a pain, but you could break it back down and run it with the media removed to see if the output flow increases.

A year seems like a very long time between cleanings and given what you described was in it, it sounds like it was too long, regardless of what the display on it told you. Depends on your bio load in the tank. Just throwing that out there!

 

[Spockster]

I've had a G6 for years. I find doing a full clean of the canister, including removing the impeller, causes the same issue for myself. As long as you visually see the flow looks normal right after a cleaning and as FreshyFresh mentioned there are no leaks, etc. you're good. It will eventually get back to 100% after some time. I don't know why this is, it clearly has full flow when it reports less than 100%.

However, I also concur with FreshyFresh. A year is too long. In fact, I took their advice and did my first "full" clean after 6 months. I'll never do that again. It was awful in there and caused water quality issues. Their projections for this canister are simply wrong both in tank capacity it can handle and cleanings. Personally, I change the micron filter once a week (just removing the cylinder) and once a month a do a full canister cleaning, changing the media cylinder, micron filter and cleaning the baskets, etc. Also, for the impeller, I do that once every 3 or 4 months as I find cleaning that leads to the "less than 100%" scenario you mention more often and takes me longer to prime it to get going.

Maybe if you have a light bio-load you can get away with longer clean times for the full canister but I have a heavy bio-load and absolutely need to keep to the month (or so) FULL canister cleaning schedule.

 

[Rbishop]

Roger the above....