Tunze Turbelle problem

[New Reefer]

Hi,

As a proud new Tunze owner, this is my first post to this Forum.

I live in South Africa, and Tunze products are *exceptionally* expensive in this country - so much so that I've only wished for a couple of Turbelle electronic pumps, but have not been able to afford them... up till now

An up-market clothing store had a large marine tank, fully stocked with just about everything in the Tunze catalogue, as a "display piece" in their shop. Unfortunately (or furtunately for me...) they were better at selling clothes than keeping a marine aquarium, and their tank went from bad, to worse, to totally disgusting, in a period of about 18 months.

Two days ago they decided to give up their tank. I was fortunate to hear about this, and ended up buying the following equipment at a give-away price:

1 x Comline 3130/2 skimmer
1 x Comline Calcium reactor
1 x Comline 3167 filter (won't use it, though, as I don't believe in mechanical filtration...)
3 x Comline bio-reactors (will try growing mangroves in them)
1 x Osmolator
1 x 7027/2 Temperature controller
4 x Turbelle 7400/2 electronic pumps with a Multi controller

Unfortunately for me, the shop did not keep any of the instruction manuals, and it took some trial and error before I could figure out how everything worked - to be honest, I'm still not 100% sure although I did manage to start the skimmer and the pumps. Well, at least I managed to start 3 of the 4 Turbelles... and here is my first problem...

All four of the motors are marked "Turbelle 7240/2", which I've since found out means that they are the "post 2002" models. Although all four of the drivers are also marked 7240.26 (thus being post 2002), the one driver has a date-of-manufacture stamp dated 20 12 00 on the inside of the box. The IC's mounted on the PC board are all the old "dual inline" type, compared to surface mount components on the other three drivers. The PCB is marked: TUNZE 724022I6

I swapped the non-working pump to one of the other drivers, and the pump then worked fine, so it would appear that the pump and (old) driver are not compatible.

Am I correct in this assumption?

I've searched both the Tunze UK and Tunze USA websites, and have only found mention of the old/new incompatibility with regards to the pump and controller, no mention about incompatibility between pumps and drivers... There is a new/old converter (7093.20) to allow an old pump & new controller to be connected, but again there is no mention of any old driver / new pump converter.

Is there any way I can make this new pump work with an old driver?

Lastly (for now...), is there any place on the Web where I can download instruction manuals for my equipment?

Thanks for answering...
Hennie

 

[rvitko]

The pump should be completely compatible with a new or old driver. I would contact Georg Halakas at AquaAfrika. He can help you better since he is there and has the parts. I would really consider using the mechanical filters, they work great when used to feed the bio reactors, they are an essential component for the system to work properly because Tunze skimmers do not remove particulate due to the plankton safe feature. The cartridges also serve as the carbon source for bio reactor to denitrify.

Your motors are post July 2000, not 2002, they maybe but the /2 indicates post 2000 and the driver was changed to surface mount quite recently. The older IC unit was one of the first from Dec 20 2000. This older driver had its short comings and hand to be hand tuned, they were entirely hand assembled. I would just buy the new driver and that should fix it. But any pump driver combo works, I can take a pump from 1995 and put it on a current driver and vice versa and it will work. George should be able to get you the manuals, otherwise I can. I need an email address to send them to and expect the total file size to be about 3megs so you need a good size mailbox and high speed internet.

 

[New Reefer]

Thanks, Roger - I will contact George and see if he can be of assistance.

I'm a bit pressed for time right now (rushing off to work...) but would like to debate the mechanical filtration / bio reactors with you in more detail when I have more time...

Hennie