The emperor 400 is a nice filter with a serious quality control problem. I would buy another but would NOT buy one online.
I had to get three of these before getting a good one. First one I primed, started up, it rand for about 30 mins then got really loud. I took a look inside it, and the impeller bushings had burned up. They came out in chunks. On top of that I followed the instructions on removing the spray bar clips, but one broke. I exchanged that for the second unit, and it wwouldnt even fire up. I inspected the internals nothing was visibly wrong. Tried flicking the impeller, still nothing. Spent about an hour trouble shooting it and still nothing. Exchanged it the next day and got a good working unit.
The working unit Ive got has been on for 3 days and is darn near silent. The biowheels initially spun really fast. The rite-sized filters are your typical Marineland media and I will more than likely rebuild them with bonded pad and Seachem denitrate and of course some rubber bands.
The refillable media carts up front hold about half a kilo of biomax and that what I have in there. I may swich out to matrix or denitrate once I get my aquaclear repaired.
Thats the good. Heres the bad. The intake tube is ridiculously long. I mean really long. I have no need for the mid level intake, so that is sitting in the box. I dont want the intake any closer to than sand than absolutely necessary, so I also left the extension in the box.
The spraybars need to be cleaned regularly as well as getting into the impeller to clean it is more work than any other filter ive owned. So monthly maintenance takes a little longer.
This filter seems to be well built, but the quality control issues have me concerned.
On a unrelated matter I just found out my marineland heater is under recall so thats another point against marineland.
I had to get three of these before getting a good one. First one I primed, started up, it rand for about 30 mins then got really loud. I took a look inside it, and the impeller bushings had burned up. They came out in chunks. On top of that I followed the instructions on removing the spray bar clips, but one broke. I exchanged that for the second unit, and it wwouldnt even fire up. I inspected the internals nothing was visibly wrong. Tried flicking the impeller, still nothing. Spent about an hour trouble shooting it and still nothing. Exchanged it the next day and got a good working unit.
The working unit Ive got has been on for 3 days and is darn near silent. The biowheels initially spun really fast. The rite-sized filters are your typical Marineland media and I will more than likely rebuild them with bonded pad and Seachem denitrate and of course some rubber bands.
The refillable media carts up front hold about half a kilo of biomax and that what I have in there. I may swich out to matrix or denitrate once I get my aquaclear repaired.
Thats the good. Heres the bad. The intake tube is ridiculously long. I mean really long. I have no need for the mid level intake, so that is sitting in the box. I dont want the intake any closer to than sand than absolutely necessary, so I also left the extension in the box.
The spraybars need to be cleaned regularly as well as getting into the impeller to clean it is more work than any other filter ive owned. So monthly maintenance takes a little longer.
This filter seems to be well built, but the quality control issues have me concerned.
On a unrelated matter I just found out my marineland heater is under recall so thats another point against marineland.
