I've had this pump for about 8 months, and with DC returns being relatively new to the hobby, I figured I'd let you know about my experience with this one. Advanced notice, this is a long post. If you are looking for short and sweet, I would not recommend this pump.
First off, I'm seeing that this entire series is no longer being sold anywhere, so my assumption is that my experience is pretty par for the course and not a one-off fluke, but who knows.
First impression:
I loved this pump when I got it. It's extremely quiet, more so than any pump i've ever seen. As far as noise goes, this pump was a 10/10. I also really enjoyed how it ramped on instead of just blasting the tank. If I wanted to turn off all pumps to feed coral, I wouldn't have this huge jolt of water blasting everything after kicking the return on. Instead, the pump would start on it's lowest setting (1/6) which I would assume is about 200gph based on their numbers and slowly ramp up to 6/6 (1200gph) which is typically what I ran. This meant that I had a nice amount of flow for my system while not shocking anything during the on/off transition. The pump was also very small for how powerful it is. Smaller than the equivalent Mag, Rio or Eheim.
The down side:
I'm not exactly sure when it started, but it appeared that the pump was losing power (not electricity, ability to move water). I didn't have any way to really prove it and sort of just assumed that I was "getting used" to the power and it only appeared slower. Because the slow down occurred over nearly two months, it was almost unnoticeable to me until about a week ago. I went to feed my coral on my normal, once-a-week schedule and when I do this, everything turns back on automatically with my apex in a very specific order. The 2nd to last item to turn on is the return and the last is the auto top off (so the water level in the return chamber has time to settle.) Anyway, I'm sitting, watching various things enjoy the buffet when I hear my auto top off alarm go off (water is too high). The only reason this could have happened would be the pump taking too long to ramp up and return water to normal levels. I make a mental note that I need to clean the pump and when the high water alarm turns off after about 20 seconds, I go about my day (I checked, the water level had returned to normal).
About 4 days later, I notice a strange gurgling sound coming from the tank. The return pump was malfunctioning, the variable speed controller was flashing and while the return pump was trying to turn on, it seemed like it couldn't overcome the 5 feet of head pressure and after about 15 seconds, resets and starts over. The gurgling is the water that had been pushed up the return draining back down. This was when I noticed that my display is sitting at 72F :wow2:. Because this is the hobby that it is and Murphy is a real PITA, all of this is happening at around 11:30pm.
My heaters are all in my sump and so is my temperature probe :doh:. I have a sticky thermometer in my tank, but i rarely look at it because I have so many alarms and fail safes set up with the apex. I take one of my heaters and my temp probe and throw it in my display and go to bed with fingers crossed.
I only lost 1 fish (lawnmower blenny) and my entire cleanup crew, but other than that, no major issues. I've since tried everything with the Diablo pump and I cannot get it to work. I've decided it's some sort of electrical issue and my 6 month old pump is a dud.
0/10, would not recommend.
First off, I'm seeing that this entire series is no longer being sold anywhere, so my assumption is that my experience is pretty par for the course and not a one-off fluke, but who knows.
First impression:
I loved this pump when I got it. It's extremely quiet, more so than any pump i've ever seen. As far as noise goes, this pump was a 10/10. I also really enjoyed how it ramped on instead of just blasting the tank. If I wanted to turn off all pumps to feed coral, I wouldn't have this huge jolt of water blasting everything after kicking the return on. Instead, the pump would start on it's lowest setting (1/6) which I would assume is about 200gph based on their numbers and slowly ramp up to 6/6 (1200gph) which is typically what I ran. This meant that I had a nice amount of flow for my system while not shocking anything during the on/off transition. The pump was also very small for how powerful it is. Smaller than the equivalent Mag, Rio or Eheim.
The down side:
I'm not exactly sure when it started, but it appeared that the pump was losing power (not electricity, ability to move water). I didn't have any way to really prove it and sort of just assumed that I was "getting used" to the power and it only appeared slower. Because the slow down occurred over nearly two months, it was almost unnoticeable to me until about a week ago. I went to feed my coral on my normal, once-a-week schedule and when I do this, everything turns back on automatically with my apex in a very specific order. The 2nd to last item to turn on is the return and the last is the auto top off (so the water level in the return chamber has time to settle.) Anyway, I'm sitting, watching various things enjoy the buffet when I hear my auto top off alarm go off (water is too high). The only reason this could have happened would be the pump taking too long to ramp up and return water to normal levels. I make a mental note that I need to clean the pump and when the high water alarm turns off after about 20 seconds, I go about my day (I checked, the water level had returned to normal).
About 4 days later, I notice a strange gurgling sound coming from the tank. The return pump was malfunctioning, the variable speed controller was flashing and while the return pump was trying to turn on, it seemed like it couldn't overcome the 5 feet of head pressure and after about 15 seconds, resets and starts over. The gurgling is the water that had been pushed up the return draining back down. This was when I noticed that my display is sitting at 72F :wow2:. Because this is the hobby that it is and Murphy is a real PITA, all of this is happening at around 11:30pm.
My heaters are all in my sump and so is my temperature probe :doh:. I have a sticky thermometer in my tank, but i rarely look at it because I have so many alarms and fail safes set up with the apex. I take one of my heaters and my temp probe and throw it in my display and go to bed with fingers crossed.
I only lost 1 fish (lawnmower blenny) and my entire cleanup crew, but other than that, no major issues. I've since tried everything with the Diablo pump and I cannot get it to work. I've decided it's some sort of electrical issue and my 6 month old pump is a dud.
0/10, would not recommend.
