This is a bit of a longer article so please bear with me. First and foremost, if you have submersible Gen-x pumps IMMEDIATELY inspect the back of the pump for rust. There is a plastic cover on the back that is easily removable. This article was written about two years ago, but I went to a local dry goods wholesaler last month and the pumps still had exposed metal so if you've got one of these in your tank chances are you've got a rustbucket. The sad fact is that this company has been knowingly manufacturing this substandard and quite likely dangerous product for more than 5 years!
A few years ago I'd been having some long-term issues with my farm. Even with impeccable paramters and vodka dosing something was wrong. Algae was growing out of control, there were mysterious LPS deaths, all of my Acroporas browned out completely. Then, one day while the floor was wet I put my hand into my tank, and zapped myself pretty good. Hmmm, probably should have checked that first. I bought a voltimeter from Home Depot (best $10 I ever spent by the way), and found a stray 5v shooting through that tank. Interesting. I traced it back to a Gen-x 6800 series submersible pump, and while pulling the pump out of the water for inspection it dumped about 2 gallons of pure brown water into my tank and onto the floor. Literally.
I was not enthused.
I pulled off the back pump cover and found what the picture on the top left shows. I checked my other farm system for stray current, and it all traced back to submersible Gen-x pumps. 4 out of the 6 Gen-x pumps in that farm system were corroded beyond belief. The stray current was gone, and over the next week the health and color of the corals improved dramatically while algae growth stopped. Within two weeks most of the algae was dead, and I was seeing polyp extension on some Acroporas that I hadn't seen in nearly a half of a year. All of this got me thinking about the things that we settle for as hobbyists.
Like these pumps, a good portion of which have exposed steel plates in the back that create huge pools of rust in the back of the pump that leach into your system. The manufacturer, Pacific Coast Imports, emailed a response to my query that was the same copy and pasted response that they posted in threads like this one back in 2005, when they claimed “the issues with exposed steel in these pumps has been fixed”. With a delicated layer of go fudge yourself they said that the rust was actually “metal ions in my system being attracted to the steel plate in the back of the pump, due to a large concentration of them in the water column and most likely due to additives in my tank”.
Apparently they’ve decided to congregate there and throw themselves a fiesta, and it’s the fault of my system that they exist in the first place. The stray 5 volt current must have wanted to join the festivities as well, and most likely came from my clownfish. The reason the replies from this company are copy and pasted since 2005 is that this hobby has the lowest level of accountability in any consumer products that I have ever seen. Should you want your own copy and pasted metal ions bs feel free to email these fine gents at [email protected] or [email protected].
Everything that I’ve read while researching the issues with these pumps ranges from “those are known rust buckets and you should have avoided them” to “it’s only ferric oxide which is phosban, so why are you complaining”. The idea seems to be that the consumer is to blame for buying an extremely substandard product in the first place; that they should have researched it more; that they should have taken it apart before putting it into their systems. I'm fairly certain that there are dozens of other products in our hobby with stories remarkably similar to this one (and if you know of any more feel free to email me).
We don't need to research a car to find out if it randomly catches fire, that’s an intuitive issue due to regulatory standards. Those standards came about because cars caught fire and there was a lot of outcry, followed by no one buying those cars. Government regulations followed, but regardless the market would have self-corrected because consumer outrage would have pushed industry standards to an acceptable level.
Where are the market standards in our hobby, and the consumer demands? There's no shortage of suppliers that are willing to make a quick buck by cutting too many corners, and until we stop settling for less they're here to stay.
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