Most efficient water pump?

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
Bought one (Jebao 9000) last night, it will arrive at my door (via friend's carry-on) early next week. Fingers crossed it'll work on 50Hz power, but the Koralias were fine for years (before lightning) so I'm optimistic.
This whole set-up will be a marvel of mid-size student-budget DIY foolishness, so I'll crank up a new thread when the time comes.

Thanks for advice,
A
 
Jebao Eco DC-3000 is sitting here next to me.
Sealing (though likely to need some help) 25Gal chemical buckets ready to go.
Plumbing to be purchased once we set these buckets to their racks and get our distances.

Issue: instructions for the pump say to only use it submerged... WHAT??
This is different from what their website (incl. Amazon) tells me, so what's the issue- overheating?
There's an O-ring on the schematic so if the impeller housing isn't sealed.. would really... annoy me.

My whole filtration plan is predicated on mounting this thing to an exterior wall.
Thoughts?
No, I've not tried it in a bucket yet as it requires 1" threaded inlet, which I've not gone to town for yet. Yes, I know, Murphy's law suggests that it won't work at all :)


Q: how does one open the impeller housing? There are what looks like clips, but that seems pretty flimsy/poor if they're expecting me to be able to do maintenance more than once in the life of the machine. Or maybe that's the plan...

Andrew
 
Bucket wet-test... leapin' cats!
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This is the lowest setting coming through the 1/2" nozzle.

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And on-high. That's a 1m range-pole to the right. It drained the bucket in maybe 10seconds, even with the fill-hose running.

Even with the exhaling port open to the full 1" the haystack was a >2" high.
Much flow, zero noise. Like, proper nothing. There was a very vague hum/buzz when it was dry, but the second it touched water that was gone.

So, I'm happy (so far). A few hiccups specific to my application, but that's the road.
A

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Hey Andyroo, chefkeith here from LOL. Thinking about getting a Jebao DC-9000 for a future 300 gallon clown loach river tank. Just wondering if you are satisfied with the quality of your Jebao pump?
 
Keith! Hi!
I fell out of loaches when we moved to this current house and I lost everybody: clowns got annoyed, all went slimy toxic... and that was that. Too costly to start buying/importing again from scratch, so on to native gobies & shrimp as I'm hooked on riverine full-flow systems from our years in loaches.

Re. this pump, to tell you the unfortunate truth, I've not set it up yet.
Trials were brilliant in the amount of water moved and the total absence of sound, though. Thoroughly impressed.

A
 
Keith et al,
What's the biggest pond-appropriate, submersible, DC pump on the market?
I see reference to 20,000L/Hr, but can't find on-line.

I've got a 850Gal pond refit in the works and the "Little Giant" that that was bought last year is cracked at the base... and very electricity-thirsty, 60Hz (we're at 50Hz) and without any sort of control panel, so need to turn off at the breaker (or unplug).
A
 
Hey Andyroo, chefkeith here from LOL. Thinking about getting a Jebao DC-9000 for a future 300 gallon clown loach river tank. Just wondering if you are satisfied with the quality of your Jebao pump?

Keith,
Sorry for not responding but I've yet to finish plumbing my personal system together... still looking for a drum with a seal.

HOWEVER; I used same small one and the biggest one of these style that Jebao makes (12000, maybe?) on a client's pond in November/December and... good.
The little one runs two heron water features of maybe 3.5' tall and does it nicely. Setting #3 (of 6) moves the water well, setting #4 starts filling the garden 8' away.

The big one, on the other hand: as per the interweb's annoyances, the fit and finish is really crap. Crazing and wee cracks all over the outer/latter stage of the housing. The electrics are sealed but will impact flow, leak A LOT (particularly if it's not a submerged setup) and is just generally lazy and stupid. So, two wraps of fiberglass and 2part epoxy and we had a messy (and good enough) fix. That part of the system is fed by a 1.5" and a 2" line into a communal sump, maybe 2' fall from pond surface to bottom of sump. Annoyingly, as per most of my pond work these days, it's a refit to a system designed by a swimming-pool guy, so the feeds from the pond to the travel lines are only 1', of which there are 3 (2x feeding the 2" line and 1x to the 1.5"). When everything's running clean and perfectly, we can't turn the big Jebao beyond setting #3 before it outruns the drains. Now that the charcoal etc is settled, we've had to dial-back to setting #1!!!!! At full-speed (briefly) we get a visible current.
Saturday we're going to site with hacksaw, brooms and sieves to reset the filter and get the flow moving again.

All in all, I'm very happy (touch wood).
Between resetting from #3 to #1 the big one ran sucking mostly air for a month and doesn't seem to have skipped a beat. Big one's not dead-silent like the little one, but not far off. Only annoyance was the fix necessary out of the box, but if that's the only drama with "you get what you pay for" then I'm OK with that (touch wood again).

Hope this is helpful. If/when I get this filter done on my home-tank then we should see a 100Gal long/show running as a river-system, which should be lunatic. Too bad I can't get loaches anymore, but we do have various sucker-tummy gobies and an american eel that will appreciate.
 
Update: the pond is working very well- we've reset the intake prefilters from a foam to that plastic winding mesh stuff and greatly increased intake "breathing" efficiency. System now can run at 80% without outrunning the inlets. As such, there's a light current throughout and the water is almost eerily clear. Home/personal 100Gal is set & running on an HDPE 20Gal chemical shipping can with a home-made O-ring (piece of truck inner-tube) that mostly works most of the time. Current is adequate to keep 6x Caribbean black mullet. Lost the eel & gobies through bad choices, and unfortunately got a set of Chromide cichlids which have cleaned up all of my snails, so am now thinking of breaking down and getting pleco to tidy-up a bit ... yuch.
 
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