Well its been a while so time for a bit of an update, and its been quite an eventful couple of weeks. I guess a tale of two halves. I have been running an Aquael Ultramax 1500 that I bought brand new in Feb this year, and only made it onto the tank after the delays in my tank arriving. My first impressions were actually very good, it had adequate flow, and was super quiet. In fact, I had to touch it on several occasions to make sure that it was actually working. Therefore, I thought that it was £170.00 well spent. Well that was until last week, when I did some routine maintenance, went to plug it back in and the pump would not switch on, changed the fuse, nothing. major pump failure and not even 3 months old.
With no spare, I jumped on the phone to a chap who gets my livestock and he helped me out with a matured sponge filter and an Eheim 400 air pump. I had to quite literally dump all the media trays and sponges into the tank and off course made a right mess. On a side note I was hugely impressed with the effectiveness of the sponge filter, it had my tank super clear in less than 24 hours. Not bad considering he tells me they cost around 16 quid and then the cost of the air pump and a bit of hose. Will def consider this route if I ever get my fish room up and running,
I contacted Aquael by phone call and email and guess what, no replies at all. In fact, to this day I still have had no contact and its been well over a week. In desperation I decided to bite the bullet and ordered a Biomaster 850t And thought that I can fight with Aquael and the supplier later without the worry of the tank running correctly. I wont mention names at this time, but they have been just as bad with no contact made or any offers of how to sort the issue. If it had not have been for the aid of this chap with the sponge filter I now would have a tank full of dead fish, shrimps and plants.
I read some of the warnings on this site regarding the Aquaels, and thought that it was worth a punt, and how wrong was I. Customer support and after sales is non existent, and I would advise all to avoid like the plague. In relation to the Biomaster 850t it's also a two sided story, it shifts water, the 1550lph over the 1500 of the Aquael almost appears double in performance, my water is crystal clear, almost like fish are floating in the air. The pre filter seems excellent and seems very well made. However, and this is a big however, the filter is constantly purging air and is unacceptably noisy, I only have to slightly nudge the filter and it has huge amounts of air trapped. I have been in touch with Oase and the difference in customer service is light and day. They have been very helpful, but doesn’t stop the problem. The constant hum from the filter Is so loud that I can hear it in my kitchen some 30ft away, and my daughter whose bedroom is above the tank says that she can hear it in her room.
Out tank is in our living room, and the constant hum is clearly audible over my TV and thats fitted with a sound bar.
I have ran Eheims, fluvals, JBL etc over the 20 odd years I have been keeping tanks and none have ever been this bad. Ironically, the Aquael was the quietest one that I have ever owned, its just a shame that it didn’t last longer than 3 months and has crap back up.
So to be honest, I feel like I have jumped straight out of the pan and into the fire, only on this occasions I have spent a small fortune on the 850t, and quite frankly I expected better from Oase. I just cannot see how all these high profile aquascapers are Shouting high praise for these filters, or maybe I am just dead unlucky.
I’m sure that if I can remove the air, and stop the filter from purging it will most probably get quieter, or at least thats what I am hoping will happen. Oase have suggested that they are going to send me a completely new filter and we can only see from there how it goes. From the reading on this site, I’m not holding my breath.
On a positive note I seem to have been able to dial the co2 in a bit better, and the drop checker is now showing green. Some of the plants are developing quite nicely, but some not so well. The Pogostomen erectus is growing so slowly, likewise my Siemensis 53b. For stock, I now have black neons, lemon tetras and Venezuelan Corys. All fish are doing very well.
I will take a few shots and pop them on after this post.