goddess_chaos

I purchased a Penn Plax Cascade 1000 filter from Petco in January. We installed it into a 90 gallon aquarium, which has about 75 gallons of water in it (I have two turtles in the aquarium along with a large pleco that they don't bother). We noticed in the past two days that it seemed to have lost a lot of pumping power. The overall pressure seems to have decreased; the exhaust is not forcing the water out as strongly as it did previously, and the in-take does not seem to be sucking in with the same amount of pressure. When we first noticed this, we replaced everything with the recommended supplies, and put it back together as per the instructions. We cleaned the impeller, and disconnected the hoses and ran water through them to make sure nothing was clogged. We also made sure that the valves are open all the way.
Are there any other causes there could be for the lack of pressure?

Dozey

Welcome to FishLore,

Check that the magnet and the impeller on the impeller shaft are still well secured. Any slippage will cause a loss of pressure.

goddess_chaos

Thanks for the welcome. unfortunately, I have checked the impeller and magnet are secure. I took out the impeller to make sure that there was no gunk on it, and it was clean (I cleaned it anyway) and put it back together, making sure everything was still secured. have a little pressure, but nothing compared to what it was before...

Dozey

It sounds like you’ve covered the basics. Depending on the age of the filter they are known to produce excess pressure when very new and adjust as the impeller coil breaks in. Another possibility is that the valves are not opening correctly due to a defect. A call to the manufacture can diagnose if there is any problem.

In my own experience when I first purchased my canister filter the pressure was almost overwhelming to my fish. The pressure did decrease in a week or so and like you I thought there might be a problem. After contacting the manufacture they assured me this was normal. Although I was hesitant that they were simply blowing me off my filter is still doing a wonderful job so I’ve excepted their explanation.