[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

[APD] Vortex HELP!



Tonight my wife and I decided to do Xmas, I knew what I was getting, and so did she.  Pretty boring, but we knew what we wanted and got it for each other.  So, Xmas Saturday night so I could play with my new toy over the weekend, a new Vorted Diatom filter.  I got everything put together, diatom charged and everything...first run was, well, scary.  Despite reading the instructions quite carefully after charging the bag and letting the clamp on the exhaust pipe go a whole cloud of diatom powder went into the aquarium.  Fine, I read the book, it said that was no harm to the fish and eventually would just get charged back in the filter.  Cool!  It's working! 

Uh, lots of air going down the intake, there's a leak...alright, they didn't glue it enough?  So I sqeeze the intake a bit to check that and the air stops, tubes aren't really snug, not a big deal I get a nylon tie and clamp that on there, problem solved.

Uh, it's starting to smell?  WHOA, the pump is too hot to touch!  :-(  I look into the jar and it's perfectly clear, water is coming out the exhaust pipe pretty well, and the thing is humming along...so I guess the motor might get a little hot...

Uh, it shut off!  DOH, what happened to my new toy?  I figured maybe the WHOLE bag of diatom powder that ships with the unit (despite the instructions) isn't supposed to go in there, so I take the whole setup into the kitchen where I proceed to make a large mess trying to get it to flush, which I did eventually.  Now I've got it running with no diatom powder, thinking there was so much in there it cloged it up.  Motor is still getting hot, warmish, but I can touch it without burning myself...back to the book, it says 3 cups for the XL model (which I have) so I put in 3 cups into the bucket I'm working in.  The water clears quickly and it's humming away, I'm happy.  So I grab the whole setup, put the tubes into a pitcher and bring it over to my tank.  Set everything up and run it in the pitcher again like the instructions say so for recharging, this takes care of the cloud...now the pitcher is clear, cool.  I take the pitcher out and watch as my tank REALLY begins to clear before my eyes, I can see deeper and deeper in by millimeters..centimeters...

Uh, it shut off again!  Wow, the motor is REALLY hot again, I can't touch it.  So, here it stands, the Vortex is on my tank right now, cooling off.  I'm glad it has this auto shut-down feature probably to avoid fire, but why is it getting so hot?  I read the book again for the fifth time or so.  Yea, oil the pump every 3 months or so, on the pump it says anually but whatever you do, "DO NOT OVER OIL!"

SO!  After my long story, what the hell should I do?  Are the motors supposed to get _that_ hot (no way!)?  Are they shipped without oil?  What if it has oil and I over oil?  It seems to me there's just no oil in there, but I'm not about to oil the thing after about 10 minutes use and have something go wrong...perhaps over oiling by 3 drops isn't a big deal?

I hope someone has an answer, my wife gets all upset when she buys me something I'm all excited about and it doesn't work as I expected.  I'm a little upset, but I figure it's something that can be solved with just _3_ drops of oil.

Thanks guys,

-Dave
_______________________________________________
Aquatic-Plants mailing list
Aquatic-Plants at actwin_com
http://www.actwin.com/mailman/listinfo.cgi/aquatic-plants