Problem With Eheim Primer Pump

[Derek2]

Hi

Sorry to jump in with what is going to sound to most people here with a real stupid question/ story.

I am about to start a fishless cycle on my tank after a time a way from the hobby. I went to prime the filter (it's an Eheim professional external filter) by pushing down the pump but the pump would come back up, so I took it all apart to realise that whatever lubricant covered the rubber "o" ring on the mechanism has deteriorated away meaning the spirngs can't pull the pump back up.

Now here's where I have done something phenomenally stupid. Not thinking properly, I sprayed WD40 from the top for some reason assuming that this is away from the water coming into the filter. Of course, this is a ridiculous assumption and now, although my pump is moving smoothly I am extremely reluctant to start the filter up for fear of contaminating the tank with the admittedly small amount of WD40 I have adminstered.

Any advice? (please don't judge me too harshly!)

Thanks in advance

 

[Derek2]

Hi

I was wondering if anybody had any thoughts on this? Should I thoroughly clean the pump and try and source some proper lubricant? Does anyone know where I could get this from? Will it be ok as it is?

Thanks

 

[waterdrop]

You can get a spray can of the proper lubricant from eheim. On the usa site its featured on the front page. Eheim.com

Yes, I'd probably be worried about the WD40. Eheim are pretty good about designing their equipment to come almost completely apart and back together in the hands of the hobbyist but I'm not sure the areas you've hit will be able to be fully exposed and cleaned. I guess you may have to make a judgement call as to whether you can get it cleaned up enough yourself or would want to send it in to the depot for their attention. They are always quite good chatting about service issues via either email or phone in my experience. Another thought if those don't pan out would be to run it with water on a non-tank container and repeatedly clean everything - perhaps the lubricant that was going to get free would do so and be removed with a process like this but I don't know if I'd trust it.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Derek2]

Thanks for your resonse. I'm pretty sure I can get to the bits I've sprayed; I took the thing apart to get an understanding of how it worked so I'm pretty confident I can clean it. The guy at my local shop suggested cleaning it with kitchen roll and using Vaseline to lubricate it.

Thanks again.