Yes It can be in basement and even go to second floor no problem you still may hear the pump run tho cause they are loud. You will need an apex controller to use dos. It can not be used stand alone.It seems like a lot of people complain about the noise of the DOS. I have my 100 gallon tank in my office on the second floor and my mixing station in the basement. All told it's about 10 feet total from the bottom of my mixing tank to the top of my sump, plus about 10 feet horizontally. The DOS has a max head of 24' and the Versa is 14', so I don't think I want to risk it. So my question is, can this pump be placed in my basement where I won't hear the noise? Can they be programmed and then run standalone without a controller, or would I have to buy a new controller?