Love the design of the pump and was exactly what I was looking for. Unfortunately, there is a lower corner leak in the third chamber. It was a little disheartening as I had my reef tank up and running already. I already hard plumbed the sump to the display with PVC. So, if I had to return it, I would have to dismantel it by cutting the drain pipe and replacing the bulkhead. This would be a lot of time an expense. Then I would have to return the product and wait again for them to ship it back to me. I couldn't afford to wait that long as my tank was already full of water and some livestock.
So, I decided to drain the whole sump and just re-sealed the edges with silicon. It stopped the leak and hopefully it won't open up again. I know the product has a warranty against leaks. Like I said, the sump works fine now, just disappointed I had to deal with the leak.
Once I fixed the leak and Rigged the overflow panel in the first chamber it works great. Not sure if all the parts came or not.
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I was bummed out over this product. Really my fault in buying it It's not that great. I threw out the "filters", they got "gunned" up in one week (expected really). The other area for use as a REFUGIUM is close to worthless. The construction I thought was flimsy way to thin plastic careful here. The tubes the provide will gunk up real fast as they are the ribbed flex tubes. Just by a cheap aquarium with out all the fancy garbage... really nothing added here folks. My bad in buying it.
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If you want to experiment with different sump designs, this is likely a great place to start, especially for the price. However, there are some annoying oddities. I am using it for a ~150 gallon turtle aquarium, so I have a bit of an odd usage as well. As the turtles eat just about every plant except java fern and java moss, I am running a refugium for some fast-growing plants to help with nitrate. However, I also need to run some biomedia (in my case, seachem matrix). This doesn't situation work out so well out of the box, but after some fab work, it's running well.
The Good:
1) Uses standard 4" socks. While the aqueon socks are nice, they are expensive, so it's great to be able to buy standard size socks, unlike other brands who use hard to find square ones or non-standard 3.75" and other craziness. It also lets you change micron size easily, as aqueon only seems to make one. For instance, I can run two 200 micron and one 50 micron for a couple days for some relatively quick water polishing.
2) For lower turnover, nearly dead silent. If you keep the GPH low enough using hard plumbing such that air bubbles don't form, the underwater inlet design is nearly silent. The only thing you will hear is water running from the 2nd to the 3rd chamber if you keep the 3rd chamber reasonably low.
3) Reasonably priced. Yes, the acrylic is thinner than it could be, no flame polished edges, et cetera, but that all keeps the cost down. So far it is only a fit/feel issue and not a functionality issue. If the edges are bonded well it shouldn't leak, but we'll see. I'm hoping the others with leaks were a manufacturing defect and not a design issue.
4) Highly configurable. Let's face it, a fair portion of this hobby is about trying different things or changing your mind. If you don't know what kind of sump you want to run, or change the aquarium and it's inhabitants around, it's great to be able to re-use the sump in different ways.
The Bad:
1) no room for heaters. Most people want to have heaters in the sump rather than the display tank, mounted vertically, and configured in a weir so that they do not go dry when the power to the pumps is off. The only place to do that on this sump is in the first chamber with the filter socks. This is hard to reach, very close to the socks which get tangles in the wires, and not very tall, so most of the common heaters (e.g. ebo-jager, and oddly aqueon's own heaters) do not fit. I ended up using three hydor theo 200's which gets by.
2) The adjustable wall between chamber 1 and 2 is held in place by the water force. Once the water stops, the wall falls. Not a big deal for a wet/dry filter, but if you are using it as a fuge, you suddenly have one big fuge that plants and animals can escape to. If you have a skimmer in #2, the water level change is sure to be frustrating. I ended up trimming some plastic tablecloth hold-down clips to keep it in place. A couple stainless or plastic clips would do wonders here. Perhaps I'm one of the few that turns the water off for feeding, or ever has power failures .
3) The bubble trap's overflow (between the 2nd and 3rd chamber) is too low/non adjustable. Rather than the sponge trap, which is likely nice for skimmers, I used the overflow before the return chamber to hold my biomedia. However, the overflow is non-adjustable and set really low, so most of the water was flowing over the top of the media rather than through it. I suspect the same thing would happen with the bubble trapping sponge, but I haven't tried. I ended up cutting a piece of acrylic to make the overflow taller, yet still shorter than the refugium wall so it won't flood while pumps are off
4) The return area takes up the most space of all the chambers. I suppose this makes sense for the few without an auto top off so that the pumps won't run dry on a daily basis, but I'd rather this area be used to give me more filter/refugium space or a space for heaters/equipment.
5) The inlet water tube noise reducers are sealed. Perhaps a small child could get their hand down there to clean, but no adult could. Since they are sealed, you can't disassemble them either, leaving them to attract sloughed algae, snails, and the like.
6) The incoming water tubes are small. At least for the model 4, 1.5" inlet tubes should be in place to match the flow numbers they have posted. I used hard PVC direct to them, but the reducing coupling slows the water quite a bit and makes for a lot more noise than if they were larger in the first place.
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While this is a great sump there are a few things that create drawbacks to it. One the filter socks are hard to place and remove, let alone are expensive and clog quickly. Two there is no way this can handel 2200gph. I have 1450 exactly running through it and it is maxed out. Im usint two 1.5" lines feeding the sump and the 1" 90's going to it are to restrictive for that kind of flow level. Other than that its worth every penny.
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The thermostat is set to 68F rather than the advertised 76F. If 68 degrees is what you need then buy it but if you, just like me, need a constant 76-78 degrees then don't waste your time and money on this good looking heater because looks is all it has.
