At my wit's end with Penguins...

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
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dledinger

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Mar 10, 2013
78
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0
North Carolina
Looking for a recommendation on new filters. I have a 65 with silver dollars running 2 Penguin 350s....and though they're a tad noisy, I have had no problems with them in a year.

I also have a 60 Mbuna tank running 2 350s that's been running for a couple months, and they are giving me nothing but troubles. Every time I think I have them licked, they start acting up again. Noise. Impeller stopping. Grinding. Shaking. Rattling. There is no apparent wear or problems with the impeller. I've cleaned everything a zillion times...I am lubing it with a little olive oil when it acts up. That seems like a miracle cure for about a day.

Is there any reason I should not just put two AC 110s on the tank and be done with it? I've always had good luck with ACs....just wondering if there is any other recommendations.


Thanks,
Dan
 
BTW...I picked up all four of these filters last spring for $28 each with free shipping. I STILL wish I would have bought AquaClears from the start.
 
I have had good luck with penguens... I like canister filters... They have large meia capticity and force water though the media... They do have low gph but there media space makes up for it... For tanks that are 60-65 gallons an xp2 or xp3 would be good, an xp3 would be overfiltration but there is not a huge price gap betwen the xp2 and xp3 so I would do the xp3 unless you get a good deal on a xp2... if you don't do fistar canisters I think an ehiem would be a good choice...
 
Checked everything out thoroughly again last night. One of the rubbers on the end of the impeller seems to be rolling back when I instal the impeller. So I suppose that's the problem. For the price of a new impeller I'd be better off ordering another filter and capitalizing on the spare parts.

Screw it. I decided to order two AC500s and some extra biomedia from pet mountain. Hard to beat $65 each with free shipping. My other two 350s seem to be doing well, so I'll keep these for parts or the random tank I decide to set up. It was nice running all 350s on all my bigger tanks....made maintenance easy having only one type of cartridge....but it never hurts to have the spare parts laying around.
 
I also checked out the Aquatechs at Walmart. I always heard they had common parts with the Penguins (they take a Right Size "C" also), but the impeller is definitely different. It may be the same as the old Penguin 330, but not the 350.
 
good choice on the AC500s will work well on the tank!
 
75's are great ...I have 2 set up:popcorn:
 
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