Good or Bad Idea: Your Return Pump Connected To A Controller?

[Scott.h]

I went with the reef octopus dc pump over the vectra simply because it's apex ready. My flow is controlled by the variable speed port on the apex and I have an alarm set if it pull less watts then it runs at. Battery back up. No brainer, ..can't see why you would want it any other way?

 

[-Logzor]

i'm torn, I have my return separated atm... but I am thinking I would rather have it on my apex so I can monitor it

Friend of mine just today almost crashed his system. An extra heater on his EB8 kicked in and tripped the EB8. Guess what else was on the EB8? Point is lots that you're not thinking of can go wrong. I admit would be nice to monitor it though, but I haven't needed to.

 

[reefsahoy]

Friend of mine just today almost crashed his system. An extra heater on his EB8 kicked in and tripped the EB8. Guess what else was on the EB8? Point is lots that you're not thinking of can go wrong. I admit would be nice to monitor it though, but I haven't needed to.

Glad to hear he saved his livestock. Could you give more details? What else is plugged into the eb8? What size tank is he running? Also wondering if his system emailed him about the failure? Thx

 

[Brew12]

Personally, I think for many systems the return pump is an overrated piece of equipment.

For most of us, the single largest and most important filter in our tanks is the live rock in the DT. I am much more concerned about losing my powerheads than I am my return pump. If I lose my return pump, I only lose my skimmer and heaters. I can do without those for days and my temp will stay over 72F without my tank crashing. I am much less confident that I will have enough flow for biological filtration if I lose my powerheads. That is why my powerheads are on battery backups while my return pump is on an EB8 and GFCI protected.

 

[lefkonj]

Personally, I think for many systems the return pump is an overrated piece of equipment.

For most of us, the single largest and most important filter in our tanks is the live rock in the DT. I am much more concerned about losing my powerheads than I am my return pump. If I lose my return pump, I only lose my skimmer and heaters. I can do without those for days and my temp will stay over 72F without my tank crashing. I am much less confident that I will have enough flow for biological filtration if I lose my powerheads. That is why my powerheads are on battery backups while my return pump is on an EB8 and GFCI protected.

I agree if you think about your return pump is usually just on or off.

 

[Terence]

Friend of mine just today almost crashed his system. An extra heater on his EB8 kicked in and tripped the EB8. Guess what else was on the EB8? Point is lots that you're not thinking of can go wrong. I admit would be nice to monitor it though, but I haven't needed to.

If a heater tripped his EB8 then it was overloaded. User error. This same user error could happen on a power strip or from a main circuit breaker.

Careful attention must be paid to understanding what equipment is being connected into your circuit in terms of its load and operation. Control aside I have seen so many people's tanks that are a fire or accident waiting to happen due to negligence or just plain ignorance of how all these (often high power) electrical devices must be connected in order to be safe.

As I mentioned before, it depends on what one means by "control" when it comes to a return pump and then with that comes many pros and cons.

 

[Brew12]

If a heater tripped his EB8 then it was overloaded. User error. This same user error could happen on a power strip or from a main circuit breaker.

Careful attention must be paid to understanding what equipment is being connected into your circuit in terms of its load and operation. Control aside I have seen so many people's tanks that are a fire or accident waiting to happen due to negligence or just plain ignorance of how all these (often high power) electrical devices must be connected in order to be safe.

As I mentioned before, it depends on what one means by "control" when it comes to a return pump and then with that comes many pros and cons.

Wouldn't it be nice to have an EB8 with individual GFCI receptacles for safety? I wonder how hard it would be to encourage Neptune to work on something along these lines.... ;)

 

[ca1ore]

Pros and cons, and highly dependent on the quality of the return pump. I'm a multi decade external iwaki/panworld user. No 'fancy' features but rock solid performance and many, many years of reliability. Really no compelling reason to plug it through my Apex, so I don't. If in owned the new Apex and employed pumps with dubious operating life I'd probably plug through the controller.