AMP Master pumps?

[badkharma]

I'm setting up a 120 Gallon in the next few weeks (tank comes thursday and stand is in the garage being constructed! ) - As I patiently start to piece what equipment I want to be running, I'm currently thinking about external pumps. I read good things about AMP Master pumps and was thinking the AMP Master 2700 pump would be a good choice. It's about 2700 gph and considering a 40% loss, would be about 1620 gph which would be approximately 13.5 change-overs per hour. Would this pump be a good choice? What are the pro/cons of this brand? I was hoping to stay at or below $250 on the pump, and I can pick one of these up brand new for around $210...

 

[golfish]

I like mine (AM3K) I have it running 4+ years. What are you going to use it for? Sump return? Closed loop?
The pros are they move a lot of water and use very little electricty.
The cons are they don't move a lot of water if you reduce below 1.5" pipe. They MUST have 1.5" feeding them. You can reduce to 1" on the output but your going to reduce the flow to about half. If your going to use it for sump return your going to have to have a pretty good size sump and overflows.

 

[badkharma]

I was planning on a sump return. It will definitely have 1.5" going in, and probably 1.25" going out. I don't mind the reduced flow, but we'll see. I might just have 1.5" going the whole way and make sure I have a big enough sump. I believe the overflow is one corner 6x6 in a 120 (48x24x24).

 

[golfish]

Originally posted by Badkharma
I believe the overflow is one corner 6x6 in a 120 (48x24x24).
I doubt your overflow will be able to keep up with the pump if you run it full throttle. I had two 6x6 corner overflows in my old 150 with 1.5" bulkheads. I also had a 40 gal sump. I tried running an Amp Master 3000 using all 1.5" pipe. There was no way the two overflows could keep up. The 1.5" bulkheads were ok, the water just couldn't flow over the top of the overflow fast enough. I made the space between the teeth on top of the overflow wider, that seemed to fix that problem. Now the GPH were up around 2500-3000 but the noise going into the sump was loud plus the water went through the sump so fast the bubbles didn't have time to float to the top so I had tons of bubbles in the tank....a large sump would probably have taken care of the problem (my sump has 5 baffles) I don't think it would help the noise tho.