Firecracker

Hi,

Lately, our HOB biowheel filter has been making tons of noise. It sounds like it's cavitating or something--a scraping, rattling sort of noise from inside. (I hope I've described that well). It sounds like it does when the water level drops to the top of the pickup and it sucks a little air inside, but right now the water is well above that level.

The water is full, filter is clean and we just took it apart and cleaned the intake thing and everything else. Is it dying? I wonder if we damaged or made a mistake reassembling it after cleaning and now it is sucking in air from somewhere? Does that hurt it in the long run?

COBettaCouple

Have you checked the impeller? It might need replaced.

steveangela1

The impeller like above might need to be replaced... or what kind of substrate do you have? If you have a lot of just sand or fine sand in your tank you won't see it when you look at the filter... take it out and rinse it completly out w/ tank water... (if you have sand) also if you have an air pump it will cause prob if you have sand substrate w/ a penguin... I had prob w/ my penguin on my 36bow and it was the airstone spiting sand into my intake and I couldn't see the sand in the filter and missed it for a week... I finally caught on to it when I turned off the air pump on a guessing game and found out it was the problem

Firecracker

No, we have gravel with a bubble wand. Could any floating plant matter cause the same problem as sand? I wouldn't think so, but I don't know ...

We already rinsed everything in tank water.

What do I look for when checking the impeller? Just visible damage?

Trpimp147

check the impeller make sure it is installed properly...

COBettaCouple

Check that the magnet end is in right and that it sits right inside the filter box.. that can often cause a noise problem with the penquins. Sometimes it can even end up upside-down.

Firecracker

Turns out it was (we think!) from the bubbler! We moved the end of the bubble wand and now the filter is quiet again.

COBettaCouple

Cool