I just replaced a Penguin 150 with a Penguin 200 and the 200 is very noisy. It sounds like a constant, low-grade grinding. Not the sort of thing you'd quickly unplug it for, but it is loud enough to be annoying and to sound just plain wrong. I can't believe that it should be this loud...any suggestions?
There is usually some inital noise with the penguins, but this should disappear after a day.... also, try pouring some water into the holding well, and see if this helps the noise, maybe its the level of water within the filter, mine makes noise when i start it up before it has a good water flow going through it.
I just made it a little quieter by taking it completely apart and ensuring that everything was seated properly, but it is still loud. I remembered that I've had to completely disassemble each Penguin I've gotten to ensure parts are seated, even though it was undetectable by feeling and manually operating the parts that anything was wrong. Still loud...
yeah... they're very sensitive when it comes to noise... i have two penguin 350's in the 60g that's in my room, and they have sand in the propeller... fayt... they sound like blenders...
I have the penguin 350 as well but it dosent make any noise except when the water splashes when the tank water is low.
Gumbii, is 55 gallons within a room that is upstairs a good idea... it may be to heavy. This is my room, not yours
I've had the same problem with all the penguins I get. If a cory stirs up a bunch of sand and it gets lodged in the impeller region as gumbii said it can sound like a blender. lol But my guess is since yours is new it may have just not been seated properly like you said. If I seat mine too far in by pressing the top of the intake too hard into the impeller housing it will even cease to work. Sometimes if mine gets bound up and I don't feel like taking the whole thing apart I'll just take the top plates off and jerk the impeller housing and top intake tube while the thing is still running. This is probably really bad but it usually works. The first time I attempted this was at 3am when some plant leaf had got stuck in the penguin 100 in the bedroom and it sounded like the f'ing thing was going to blow up. I really didn't feel like going through the 20 minute process of disassembly and rinsing with decholorinated water. If the jerking (lol) fails to work I take it apart and check for some more freaking java moss or a snail to be stuck in it. I seem to have a lot more success with these filters now that I've attatched some filter floss (kinda like cheesecloth) to both intake areas. It seems to stop most sand, JAVA MOSS (god this stuff is killer on filters), snails, and other debris from getting stuck in the impeller hosuing, but still allows a very sufficient flow.
darkruby... remember that a gallon of water weighs about 10lbs... so a 55g tank is alot more than 550 pounds plus the tank, substrate, stand, water in the filters and such...
i was going to put a 180g tank in my living room last year... but i didn't think my floor would take the ton in 12 square feet of living room space... this guy that builds tanks professionally said that i would would have to tear a hole on the floor and build a new foundation for the tank... shit... that was more expensive than the tank itself... ha... so i got myself some green cheek conures instead...
good luck, and have someone look at the way the house is built...
gumbii, an easy way to fix that problem is to go to your local hard ware/home improvement store, (not putting any plugs in here for any store in particular) and get a couple of lolly columns. if you have a basement that is cement all you need to do is place the columns under the floor joists where you want to put the tank (directly under the tank for best results) and put the two halves together and from there screw the top part of the column up so that the plate is really tight against the joists and bam you can support a micro bus in your living room if you wanted too!!!!!
Brandon
Ps if you don't have a basement and have just a crawl space with a bare ground under your place, you can always get a couple square cement slabs and build yourself piers under the joists so that they will hold the weight.
oh lastly, when you are positioning the tank make sure that the joists run across the tank not with it length wise, this will spread the weight out and not cause your house to collapse in on itself!!!! every apartment i have ever been in i have had to shore up the flooring for my 125 gal.
FYI, the Penguin 200 is much quieter now. Only slightly noisier than the 150. I don't know if anyone else would even notice the difference. In really looking at the parts closely I can see why it might be loud until it breaks in. The impeller seems to have at least two hard plastic pieces that rub together and I suspect that some of the noise came from that. I don't remember the 150's needing this break in period though....
poetic irony... my house was built in the 40's i think... the floor boards brake sometimes just because i sit on the couch leg... and i'm only 200lbs... now imagine a ton on that floor...
my LFS told me about putting those little brick things under the house with some 2x4's... and the guy that told me about the new foundation didn't want to do it himself... so it wasn't like he wanted to take my cash... he just didn't want me to destroy my house or the tank...
