DC main pump or AC pump

[rygh]

Then why is the consensus that they are the worst? What you say sounds logical but doesn’t seem to match experience.

I haven’t owned any of their pumps so I have no personal input, but all the discussions I see focus on them being the lowest quality with poor reliability and support, but also the cheapest so still worth it to a lot of people.

Any pump can fail. And it happens a lot given the horrible salt water environment.
Jaebo customer service is ZERO. Real warranty is how long you can return it. About 30 days.
Jaebo also tends to use cheaper parts in motor driver, so fails a little bit more often, although probably not that much.

Combine failures and zero support, and you get a bad reputation.

Personal experience:
I am currently using 3 Jaebo pumps (2 returns + 1 ATS) and 1 red dragon pump (Royal Exclusive skimmer).
I have had 1 Jaebo fail and 1 red dragon fail. Along with a reef octopus skimmer pump and countless powerheads.
The Royal Exclusive service was great, they cross-shipped a new controller in a couple of days.
The Jaebo service was crap, but I knew that and had a spare already purchased.
Take that as you will.

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The "most reliable" pumps I had were old external Pan World AC pumps. Iwaki spinoff. They had a different type of magnetic coupling,
that was better at reducing calcium buildup. But power hogs.

 

[Macroman]

I must admit I am a little more picking on these things. I am a chemical engineer (polymer) so pumps can be every expensive. Micro sells a line of small magnetic drive pumps made of SS and teflon. I have used these for 40 years. http://www.micropump.com/ I want a reliable system and do not want my pump to die and kill fish.

What about the Italian pumps with controllable AC? Hydor has a line of pumps Seltz D which are reasonable and controllable. https://reefbuilders.com/2019/07/18/hydor-seltz-d-pump-review-the-best-value-in-controllable-flow/ These are about 2X the price of the Jebao but look better made. Has any one got any experience with these pumps?

Jebao quality is suspect for me. Attached is a picture of molded pipe attachments from Jebao. The flash at the mold line is unacceptable and this is in advertisement pictures. The molding on these parts indicate a potential fault point. It might be hard to get a hose to seal on the nibble.

Rossmount has pumps and controller. The controller can run 2 units and is programmable. The problem is this is $200 and the pump is $100. https://www.rossmont.com/us/

 

[Macroman]

Oh absolutely, which is why people are suggesting DC pumps because you can always dial down a DC pump for what you need. I was simply going on that number that was thrown out above of 10x your tank volume, and usually if you're going to do that then you're basing it on "real" flow to the tank. Look at the head pressure diagrams of whatever pump you have, every 90 degree bend is another foot, etc. Not just get a pump that's rated for 10x your tank volume at 0 foot head.

The pump head and the pumping is a problem reducing flow, but pumps are also not necessarily performing to design. If you select a pump too close to the published flow charts you may still lack flow.

It's simply a school of thought that allows you to not "waste" water movement, not saying it's "the right way" to do things just a different idea. As an example lets say your skimmer pump can pull 2 times the tank volume of water through it every hour, well if you're pushing 10x the water through your return pump then 80% of that water flowing through the sump is not getting skimmed out because for every 10x volume only 2x of that can be pulled by the skimmer leaving 8x flowing just taking a trip back to your display. Now obviously it isn't as simplistic of a view as that as water is mixing together, but there is some truth to the idea that some of that water going through your sump is effectively "unskimmed" so unless you have a need for that water movement why do so much.

The Sump is just an Eshopps RS-75, but I am expanding to add a Refugium tank. The Skimmer also Eshopps S-120 and rated for up to 120 gallon. Therefore the skimmer is over rated. I think there is alway only a portion of the water skimmed as the pump on the skimmer is much smaller and part fed to the pump is air.