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Average Customer Review:
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Good UnitJan 15, 2012
By Dagger One Bravo
I've been running one of these for close to a year now and other than a couple minor things I think it's the best powerhead you can get in it's gph range.
First off, it's so far the ONLY powerhead I've ever used that is completely silent. Even at night there is no droning hum that seems to get louder by the minute until it becomes an unbearable roar that you can hear across the house. As an aside, mine is rated at 150 gph. This one claims to be 172 gph. 172? Hard to imagine that they'd make a 150 model then make another that puts out a whopping 22gph more. I sense a typo or a bit of math trickery on the part of the manufacturer... or possibly a slight improvement in the design.
On to the problems. My 150 is as big as a baseball, if not a little bigger and the intake pipe is not centered at the bottom. It favors the "outlet side" (is there such a thing as a side in the world of a sphere?) of the unit. The outlet also has a slight downward angle. Not sure of the rationale behind either of these but they are, at worst, trivial negatives. Coupled with the bracket for this thing it becomes what can be, in some situations, intrusively big. Because of it's size and the big ol' bracket that it mounts in it doesn't lend itself perfectly to undergravel filter pipes because the pipes are usually so close to the glass. You can probably figure what I'm talking about without me having to describe it. It still does work with UGF but the pipes won't be perfectly straight once you get it all connected. Conceivably you could dismiss the bracket and just drop the unit down over the pipe but that's not very stable plus it brings us to the next problem:
The big,fat extension cord sized power cable. It's thick and it's stiff and any movement of it moves the powerhead if it isn't secured to the tank. If you inadvertently hit it and knock the powerhead off the pipe then you lose your filtration and start chopping up any little fishies that happen to swim by. This cord issue is only a problem if you try to use the unit out of it's bracket so it's really only as big a problem as you make it.
It is well built and MINE is 100% silent even on the quietest of nights. It also has a solidly built, removable intake strainer, a flow rate adjuster/shut-off and on mine the air feed line attaches via a removable outlet insert that looks like it would decrease GPH substantially if I were to ever use it. I don't use it so it doesn't matter to me. The picture for this one looks like the airline drops right down into the flow rate adjuster but I'm pretty sure it's not going to work that way when you put it all together.
The bottom line is that the powerhead is very nice if you aren't looking for the smallest, most unobtrusive unit you can find. It's design limits it's seamless functionality but it'll still work for whatever you want to use it for including powering undergravel filters. Just don't expect the pipes to stand up completely straight when you get it connected.
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