"Pszemol" verbositized:

This is kind of misleading for the custommer, who usually
expect the pump rating at 4' match the plumbing system he
has at his fish tank.

Amen! But all companies do whatever it takes to get their ratings the
highest, anyway they possibly can. It's akin to the labels on food
products! Who on this planet eats what they call a "serving"?


That is what I am confused with... People are running very
expensive pumps but in my comparison QuietOne was just as
good as LittleGiant for the 1/3 price. Less space taken in
the cabinet, less electricity used to do the job, less heat
generated overall... And on top of this you say you have
better experience with this kind of pumps than with real
inline ones...

I have used everything from Little Giant and Hydrothruster II, to Mag
Drive and Generic. With Little Giant we have had problems with
burnout, oil leaks, housing corrosion, etc.
With many other externals (separate pump and motor combinations), we
have had problems with bearings and seals and on occasion winding
corrosion and failure.

After using several brands in aquaria, including reefs, and for
commercial use, we have had the lowest failure rate using Maxi-Jet
pumps. As long as they do not have a manufacturers defect, and every
so often a whole batch of them or some near the end of a lot will have
potting defects.
So I might suggest if you buy Maxi-Jet pumps, that you pop the back
cover off and make sure there is not exposed rubber band and that the
potting material completely covers the unit.
Of those we had that failed, every single one had a rubber band
exposed that was not covered by the potting material. As such, the
rubber band would quickly decay, allowing sal****er to get to the
winding and pretty soon, poof.
The rubber band is used to hold the thermal sensor against the winding
so it doesn't drift away from it while it is filled with potting
material.

MaxiJet 1000? Did not know they make it... We have MJ900 and MJ1200
available for the fish hobby. Is the MJ1000 somewhere in the middle?

And here I didn't know they made anything above the Maxi-Jet 1000!
Of course, it's been a long time since we have had to buy any new
ones, the last case was purchased around 1995/96. The ones we have
just keep going like the Energizer Bunny.
We also have several of the larger size Mag-Drive pumps also, but as
they go belly up, we replace them with two Maxi-Jet's back to back.

If you don't have a lot of head pressure to have to deal with, you
can't beat those little Maxi-Jet's for moving liquid from one place to
another. If you need head pressure, the Mag-Drive pumps are a good
alternative.

What is its electricity consumption? I find MJ900 much more efficient
than MJ1200 comparing watts used to flow in gph. So for free powerheads
it is much better to have water moving with three MJ900 than two MJ1200.
I have listed my findings about powerheads efficiency in November last
year on this group:
In this comparison MJ900 is almost twice more efficient than MJ1200
hawing index Flow/Watts 27 when MJ1200 has it only 14.75...

I will agree that some other pumps move water at a lower power
consumption than the Maxi-Jet 1000 which eats more electricity than
normal, but it also has a much higher head pressure than all the rest
too, which must also be considered.

M-J gph watts
250 78 5
500 153 7.5
750 217 8.5
1000 265 20

For example: Two 500's at 153 gph each should be able to pump 306
gph.
Now, lets raise the viscosity of the fluid being pumped and move the
head up to 4 feet.
The 500's won't cut it, not even three of them back to back.
But the 1000 doesn't even grunt at the harder work!

I was using mainly 750's in my reef aquaria as they added much less
heat to the system than the 1000's do, which is a consideration in
that application.

But if you switch to hydroponic applications and/or high viscosity
liquids where temp is not a concern or even a benefit, the flowrate of
the 750's drop considerably. Whereas the 1000's will drop only a
small amount, sometimes not even negligible.

So, if it takes 3 750's to move the same amount of heavy liquid, your
better off with the 1000 where one will do the trick at lower energy
consumption.

But you are wise to consider the wattage each pump consumes as wattage
used converts directly to heat.

Maxi-Jet's shut off, rather than burn up, if they run dry! Which is
also another consideration, if they are used in unattended pumping
situations.

We have had several Rio 800's, 211 gph, 12 watt running back to back
in order to move some of our heavier liquids. They are a good little
pump too! But they are more on a par with the M-J 750 pump which
pumps 217 and only uses 8.5 watts.

I don't know what Maxi-Jet's cost for sure these days, I have seen
them from $29.95 all the way up to over $45.00, but we only paid like
$14.98 each for them through an aquatic retailer, by the case, in
1995/96. I think by the each, they were something like $24.95 at
retail back then.

For most of our purposes, the 1000's are almost too powerful, and on
some fluids, the tubing must be constricted to slow them down a bit,
but the 750's don't have the necessary ooomph to get the heavy fluids
moving, and adding more of them seems to defeat the purpose entirely.

TTUL
Gary