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Anyone use an Odyssea return pump?? (1 Viewer)

zwalk1839

Senior Member
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Oct 7, 2010
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316
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Apple Valley
The pump is rated at 712gph and only $36 on aquatraders.com. I think its a hell of a deal but dont wanna get stuck with some loud underated POS. It has mixed reviews online. Opinions, thoughts always welcome.
Thanks
 
If their pump is anything like their light systems, it will ignite and burn your house down. Granted that would be impressive for a submersible pump to do, considering that it's underwater, but it doesn't mean it can't shock your fish, give you a zap, or seize up and kill your livestock from lack of turnover from the sump.
 
I bought a light from them and it work like a charm for almost a year....
I have herd about the house burning down too...lol
 
Let's hope this isn't true but what the hell that's what insuarance is for... I had mine for a few months now not the best quality but it works for what I need it to do. Btw i can't even hear the motor...
 
Return pump is not something you skimp on. If it fails to restart after poweroutage or dies at the wrong time you can loose you whole tank. To me trying to save $20-30 in the grand scheme of things when you have thousands invested is just not worth it. Now if you going to just use as a utility pump or something it may be fine.

There is nothing aquatraders, catalina, or odyssey that I would ever consider buying.
 
I purchased a 150w mh light system from them and I have a modded dual 250w mh one I'm using on my 75 gallon tank. I bought one of there older models used that was notorious for the balast burning and had to replace the ballast and upgraded the led's for the moon lighting. My next mod will be to replace the CF bulbs with two strips of led's for the actinics so basically I paid 25 bucks for the shell! Both are working perfectly and the stock one has been running for almost a year. They had quality issues in the past no question but from what I have seen of the old ballast and the new ones there is a marked improvement. As far as their pumps are concerned I have purchased a couple of their circulation pumps and they are absolutely crap! the plastic housings fell apart literally! Before I drilled my tank I purchased their overflow system and it too had quality issues. In all honesty I would avoid them plus there are no options to "mod" the return pumps so I would agree with the rest and my preference would be to get a Mag 7 or Mag 9.
 
I have an odysea 4 bulb 24" t5 fixture for my frag tank. The par on it is aweful and one balast burned out after about 7 months.
 
I have a Taam Rio 3100+ pump as a back up for my system and a pump in my water making station and it's pretty quiet and reasonably priced.

Yeah, I have no experience with their T5's light units just the MH. I will admit the T5's on the 150w MH setup is pretty useless IMO due to the light reflector being one flat piece of material but my main purpose for buying it was for the cheap mh and it works as expected I guess.
 
Mag drive pump tech is not new. Any company can make it. Same for the lighting. If it not expensive does not mean it is not good. Buy it and test it out. I purchase too many products that are expensive brand name and it break just the same.
 
There are plenty of "storys" on the internet about Aquatraders products failing, however, I actually had one of these stories happen to me.

The first light system I bought, one of the LFS employees suggested that I buy stuff from aquatraders (that they didn't carry). After a few weeks, it started smoking and shooting sparks out of the top of it. If I wasn't home when this happened, who knows what would have happened.
 
Years ago, Rio pumps had a bad resputation of dumping cantonments into the tank when they die. While I'm sure they resolved those issues but I've never used nor considered since. When possible I prefer external, big fan of both Iwaki and Panworld. For submersable Ehiem and Ocean Runner.
 
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Thanks for the advice guys. Im gonna try to find a deal on something more quality but i think ill still buy it for a backup/utility pump just to try it out.
 

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