Dissapointed

[canar]

I have a 10 foot SPS reef tank. I redid it probably about a year and a half ago. At that point I made a pretty big investment in Tunze pumps. I believe the four streams that are in there are 6101's. I bought the rocks too and I also have a couple of controllers. I even bought one of your waveboxes.

The four streams are part of the aquascape and have cleverly been positioned to be discreet yet very effective. The problem I have now is all that is left working is one stream and the wavebox. About a year ago I had an alarm from one of them. I redid the rockwork and pulled it out. I cleaned it per the instructions on the sticky. I even put a new impeller in. I put it back in and it worked great. About a month later it did the same thing. Within a month of that another one went out. That one had an issue with the power supply. I tried cleaning the others again only to have them go out a short while later again. AT this point I gave up. I have four 6101's but only one works. One I already pulled out of the rocks but the other two remain. They are just unplugged. I sent the first one that gave me problems in hoping to get it repaired. The cost that was quoted to me via pm was barely cheaper than the price of a new one. That pump even still sits at Tunze as I have no use for a broken pump.

My question is are the new design streams more reliable? I am seriously looking at a closed loop design just to get something I can count on. If these cannot stay in the rocks sold by Tunze for any extended period of time whats the point of having the rock? I would much rather use the method with the Tunze's. Is my only option a closed loop or to make this large investment again?

Ted

 

[rvitko]

The pumps do have to be accessible for maintenance which has to be done every 3-6 months depending on calcium levels and KH. The rock must be the top rock to make this feasible, they are not intended to be buried in the rock work. If you have 6101's and the cords were not cut or modified and the electronics were not damaged by water they are more than likely under warranty. The 6100's are older pumps and you mentioned an alarm so it is more likely you have 6100's. 6100's are no longer made and since we quit making them 2 years ago in June, they are out of warranty. I don't recall quoting a repair, most 6100's repairs are below $100. I don't have a single pump on my bench from a Ted, I personally handle the repairs.

 

[canar]

I should still have your PM's from that pump. I will hunt through my email and see if I can find them. I am pretty sure I backed them up before I deleted em from RC. It has been more than a year since that interaction.

 

[canar]

Here is the link from my original post when I asked the question and you told me to send it to you.

Link to thread

I am still looking for the PM's with the pricing etc. Maybe you can search under my username too.

 

[rvitko]

Yes, in this case, everything was bad except the front cover and the pump was past warranty and had been neglected, they do have to be cleaned periodically, how often depends on the application, but in most reef applications it is every 3-6 months. My guess as to what happened to the pump you sent in is that the prop locked up, this overloaded the pump, which caused the driver to fail and this overloaded the transformer, it is rare but possible. That may or may not be the case with the other pumps and I would be willing to offer you a 6105 at a discount for the pump you sent in which was scrapped months ago and I no longer have.

 

[canar]

Ok I also found February 18 2008 3 notifications on PM's from you. One at 2:20 one at 2:21 and one at 5:01

Now I just need to find my backup file..

 

[canar]

Are the version 2's less likely to have these issues? Have improvements been made? Right now I am down to 1 out of 4 working. Although the wavebox had been running great with cleaning every 6 months.

I do understand cleaning them is needed. I was under the impression every 6 months would have been sufficient.

 

[rvitko]

The older electronics attempted to restart the pump every 20 seconds, giving more and more power at each attempt to try to kick it free and get it spinning. The 6105, just shuts down and it won't restart until you pull the plug and plug it back in, this should eliminate this overload damage scenario, we also changed to double lacquer dipped coils, they have thicker insulation as a result and are less likely to short. They have only been out for 8 months though, but so far, besides some complaints about noise, I have only seen 3 broken pumps, 2 were caused by a defective power supply that killed the pumps and one was DOA, it ran about 5 minutes and shut down for good. They are too new to give you a definitive answer, but so far so good.

 

[canar]

Sent you a PM