I recently had some minor issue in my tank (see http://www.aquariacentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=225437) and almost by chance I decided to check the water flow from my filter (Fluval U2, I strongly recommend this filter!).
The flow rate from the specification is 400 Lt/h, with some simple math this equate to 1 lt every 9 seconds.
I plugged a pipe to the filter and measured the time required to fill 1 Lt.
28 seconds at the first check!!!!
I removed all media, cleaned the filter, the impeller (that I had cleaned up just 1 month ago), checked without media and measured 17 seconds to fill 1 Lt.
Media back (reasonably clean) and now it takes 25 seconds.
To cut the story short I went to the dealer and got the faulty filter replaced.
Now my question is did anybody ever experimented this? I was expecting a filter to either work properly or stop all together (and OK the media clogged may slow down the flow considerably too, but this wasn't my case).
Is it possible that the motor just partially break? Because this could explain the issue... I went on holiday 3 weeks ago for 1 wk. I attached the auto-feeder and I had to slid a bit the lid in the canopy to allow the food to go in the tank, this left an open 10x10 cm square hole in the canopy that let some water evaporate in the week. The day I came back the tank had lost ~2 cm of water and the filter was catching some air so the water flow wasn't homogeneous. I added the missing water and everything seemed OK.
Now since a friend had checked just the day before I guess that the filter struggled for 24 hours max. Could this have triggered the problem in the motor ? As I said at that time the filter seemed OK, then yesterday I noticed a slow flow.
I'm wondering if good filters have some sort of protection to avoid the motor to stop working all together...
Anyway I thought this was a story worth to share.... If something sadly start to be not spot on in your tank you may want to check your filter.
The flow rate from the specification is 400 Lt/h, with some simple math this equate to 1 lt every 9 seconds.
I plugged a pipe to the filter and measured the time required to fill 1 Lt.
28 seconds at the first check!!!!
I removed all media, cleaned the filter, the impeller (that I had cleaned up just 1 month ago), checked without media and measured 17 seconds to fill 1 Lt.
Media back (reasonably clean) and now it takes 25 seconds.
To cut the story short I went to the dealer and got the faulty filter replaced.
Now my question is did anybody ever experimented this? I was expecting a filter to either work properly or stop all together (and OK the media clogged may slow down the flow considerably too, but this wasn't my case).
Is it possible that the motor just partially break? Because this could explain the issue... I went on holiday 3 weeks ago for 1 wk. I attached the auto-feeder and I had to slid a bit the lid in the canopy to allow the food to go in the tank, this left an open 10x10 cm square hole in the canopy that let some water evaporate in the week. The day I came back the tank had lost ~2 cm of water and the filter was catching some air so the water flow wasn't homogeneous. I added the missing water and everything seemed OK.
Now since a friend had checked just the day before I guess that the filter struggled for 24 hours max. Could this have triggered the problem in the motor ? As I said at that time the filter seemed OK, then yesterday I noticed a slow flow.
I'm wondering if good filters have some sort of protection to avoid the motor to stop working all together...
Anyway I thought this was a story worth to share.... If something sadly start to be not spot on in your tank you may want to check your filter.
