I have seen people looking for advice when their Bio-Wheel stopped spinning. Of course the popular advice is to clean the bushings. When that produced no results, then it was to clean the wheel itself. The thread would eventually die off and sink to the bottom. I didnt have any experience with this until now.
I started to remedy the problem with the above cleanings, but they did not help. I had also cleaned the filter the day prior but since the other remedies did not help, I figured why not the more water flow the better. Cleaning the filter did not make a bit of difference so I started a logical approach. The wheel requires water to make it spin and the pump was pushing plenty of water. I took the wheel off again to see if anything was causing friction. There was some build up on the ramp so I cleaned that with my finger. What I didnt expect was how much goo had built up there. With it all clean I put the wheel back in expecting the problem to be solved. It was not. The only thing left was the pump. I took it apart expecting tadpole guts to be wrapped around the impeller. What I found was more of the same bacterial goo buildup that was on the Bio-Wheel and the ramp. It was thick inside the pump housing, around the shaft, and in the overflow tube. It was restricting the flow through the passage ways, and it was slowing down the pump shaft. The shaft housing needed to be cleaned out with Q-tips but afterwards it worked like a champ.
I started to remedy the problem with the above cleanings, but they did not help. I had also cleaned the filter the day prior but since the other remedies did not help, I figured why not the more water flow the better. Cleaning the filter did not make a bit of difference so I started a logical approach. The wheel requires water to make it spin and the pump was pushing plenty of water. I took the wheel off again to see if anything was causing friction. There was some build up on the ramp so I cleaned that with my finger. What I didnt expect was how much goo had built up there. With it all clean I put the wheel back in expecting the problem to be solved. It was not. The only thing left was the pump. I took it apart expecting tadpole guts to be wrapped around the impeller. What I found was more of the same bacterial goo buildup that was on the Bio-Wheel and the ramp. It was thick inside the pump housing, around the shaft, and in the overflow tube. It was restricting the flow through the passage ways, and it was slowing down the pump shaft. The shaft housing needed to be cleaned out with Q-tips but afterwards it worked like a champ.
