Nero 5 - % Settings and Actual Flow

[TokenReefer]

I run a lower/calmer % block at night simply because after spending a lot of time on the water (boating/fishing) I've noticed things typically are calmer at night. Wind from the day's heat dies down, as the temperature drops and between midnight and sunrise the surface water can be like glass. As the day heats up and wind kicks in things get choppy and so does my pump schedule. The current itself may not change but the upper part of the water column sure does and I think most of our coral lives in this zone. Of course weather, wind against the tide (from weather I guess lol), the moon cycle, etc all become factors and can chop things up. I'm also going from my neck of the woods (in the summer) experiences but I had to start somewhere . AI has the moon cycle for the lights...maybe someday they'll tie it into the pumps to be used somehow...might be neat!

 

[Cryptiic86]

First, I want to say that I love these pumps. If I were writing a review on a vendor website, it would be "5 stars" and "yes, I would recommend to a friend." These are my first controllable pumps and I find the app to be really easy to use, fun to program, and I think built-in flow meter is pretty useful (as you'll see below)!

Regarding the flow, I replied in a few other threads, chiming-in about setting read-outs, and I thought the information below might be useful to others. I searched the R2R, and while one could piece this information together from various threads, I couldn't find it all in one place... so here it goes.

The Nero 5 can be tuned from 1% to 100%, however, I have found that these settings are not a percentage of actual flow vs. 3000gph. I have two, and I wanted to set my tank to a "low energy lagoon" type setting (my tank is 65g @36" long). During the day, I have the pumps set at random, between 10% and 30%. I came to these levels because at 30%, the readout showed approximately 1560gph for one pump. When each of the two pumps hit their max point, that would be about 3100gph, or almost 48x turnover. However, doing the math in my head, when I looked at the flow readout in the app, the numbers I was seeing didn't coincide with actual percentages. For instance, 10% of 3000 should be 300gph, and 30% should be 900gph. However, the meter showed differently. So, I put a single pump on "constant speed" mode and adjusted the flow from 100% down to 1% and wrote down the readings at each interval. Below are the results:

As you can see, though I have it set to random with a min of 10% to 30%, the pump is actually producing flow at 38%-52% of max gph. This actually makes me feel better about my purchase because for a while it felt like I bought two pumps that were overpowered for what I was going for and I could have gone in another direction. One other positive that I found from this table is that though I have it set at 10%-30%, the variations from the low point to the max point isn't 300% (300-900); rather, the max is only 37% higher vs the min at my settings (1140 to 1560). This allows me to dial-in the peak and trough levels I want a little more accurately; I think I'm going to make the margin wider.

There are a few limitations to these data. First, these readings are entirely from the AI app, so there is a possibility that the given percentage setting is right, but the flow read-out is wrong. Second, the reverse could be true where the flow is right but the percentage read-out is wrong (i.e., 1% power is not 1% power). Third, it could be a combination of the above two issues. Fourth, this is a single case (though both of my pumps show nearly identical numbers). Others may have different readings that are closer to the actual percentages and mine could be an outlier. I'm sure there are other limitations, this I just what I though of off the top of my head.

I don't view the differences as a knock on the product. Most, if not all other products don't have the built-in meter, so it would be hard to compare the settings of other pumps. At least the AI app allows for this type of data to be collected! I just want to say once again, I really like these pumps and would 100% buy again.

In any case, I hope others find this useful.
-Homebrewer

I bought two nero 5 specifically so I wouldn't be limited and now can't get them as low I would like at times. Probably should have went with nero 3 unfortunately