This place isn't very busy, but I'll ask here anyway. My small pump for my 50 gallon pond quit working. I had new, unused pump I bought many years ago, and figured it would be fine. It's a Tetra fountain pump ( SP425). It's a bit larger than the last pump I had in there, but thought I'd try it out. To make sure it worked, I put it in a 5 gallon bucket that had about 2-3" of water over the top of it. The side circle thing that controls the flow is almost impossible to turn.

Anyhow....I turned it on and nothing happened. I did what the instructions said, in order to "prime the pump"...but still nothing. I'm wondering if that turn thing that is almost impossible to move isn't working properly and maybe keeping things closed. But I'm not sure.

Any ideas what I should do? I did take that part off and opened up the part that covers the rotor and made sure it turned easily...which it did.

Like I said, this is a completely new pump that I bought many years ago and never used. My husband suggested that maybe I should use a little WD30 spray to make that flow control thing work, but I wasn't sure I should do that.

Any ideas? Thanks!