Hydor Seltz

[Delphinus]

I have one of these running as a sump return on a 20g. I thought I'd try it over a comparable Mag drive because these have had some pretty good reviews.

I'm going to throw a slightly dissenting opinion out there of this pump.

(First, the niceties.).. Pros:
- Quiet running pump
- Low power consumption

Cons:
- It's not reliable. It doesn't like to start without manual intervention which is a problem in the case of a power failure. Weird thing is, it does start, but the flow is a trickle. It takes considerable fiddle-faddling with it to get it to start for real. This is a big enough problem for me that I might consider replacing this pump.
- More of an annoyance, but I can live with this one: The little suction cups you can use to hold the pump in place are devil spawn. If they get to within 1" of the glass (OK, maybe I exagerrate) they suck on so hard it's impossible to remove them. On the other hand, the bond between suction cup and pump is terribly weak. They come off if you look at them wrong. But it takes so much force to push them in that you worry you'll snap the little clips. So basically what happens if you so much as touch the pump, it detaches from the suction cups, and you have to slide the suction cups over to a corner to get them to let go of the glass, because there's no pulling them straight off. (Imagine that! Suction cups that work "too well" - who'da thunk??) And then you struggle with it to get the suction cups back on the bracket.

But couple this phenomenon with the fact that everytime you feed your fish, and you shut your pump off for 5 minutes to let them catch all the food - that you're going through this process of struggling with the pump for 5-10 minutes everyday - suddenly it's not so quaint anymore.

I'm not sure what to think of the pump start issue - maybe mine is simply defective - has anyone else had this sort of problem with the Seltz's?