Ecotech Vectra -- anyone have any problems?

[Archit]

Well ... after almost 2.5 months I decided to do a water change, and as fate would have it, right after the water change the pump (Vectra L1) won't start up. I took out the pump, gave it a good cleaning, let it soak in vinegar for 30 minutes, but still no dice. When plugged in, it appears as though it's TRYING to start, but nothing ... I can see the impeller move slightly left and right at timed intervals, but aside from that, nothing else.

I should mention, initially when I plugged it in, it would start pumping water, then stop, then start, then stop .. as if it was trying to clean itself. But then it would stop completely. That's when I cleaned it and now it won't even do that.

Fortunately my water change pump is powerful enough to power the full system, but I guess Ecotech will be getting a frustrated call from me in the morning. (Big thanks to Yorgos at Love The Reef to let me dig through his bins and bins of connectors, at 11:30pm, so I could come up with a concoction to get this to work!)

Just curious, anyone else have similar issue with this pump? From my research, it seems possibly the power supply might have gone bad ... not sure how to test for it though.

Thanks!

- Archit

 

[mchartier]

I was at a LFS and he was trying to show someone the features of the Vectra. He turned the pump off to show the startup. Well he unplugged the pumps power cord, then plugged it in. It would start and stop, the lights in the driver did not look right either, turned out it was the power supply.

 

[this is me]

Knocking on my particle wood desk, but my L1 has been worrking pretty good. Did the whole calibration and everything.
I shut the pump off every week when doing my water change. It starts right back up with no problem. But this is concerning to hear that some people are having problem with their pump not restarting. I do have a M1 as a back up but would have to do some extra plumbing to get it to work with the set up.

 

[Archit]

Knocking on my particle wood desk, but my L1 has been worrking pretty good. Did the whole calibration and everything.
I shut the pump off every week when doing my water change. It starts right back up with no problem. But this is concerning to hear that some people are having problem with their pump not restarting. I do have a M1 as a back up but would have to do some extra plumbing to get it to work with the set up.

Yeah .. me too .. I have a feeling there must have been some sort of a power surge or something. My Apex "almost" failed too ... temperature on the tank dropped to 73.7 over night (yay big tanks!) ... apparently the display module was busted and it was making nothing on the apex "controllable" .. everything was in its fallback state. So spent good 2 hours this morning figuring that out.

And now, my snails are having a baby-party, so I can't even see inside my tank! I guess the temp fluctuation really got them in the mood hah! Entire tank is wicked cloudy.

I guess the only couple positives after all the above crazy-ness is:

1) I'm potentially going to be a grandfather to a million trochus snails
2) I see a few rock anemone babies in my tank!! WOOT!

- Archit

 

[Joe Rice]

I had a ton of trouble with my Vectra M1 when I first got it. Here's a thread I started on reefcentral about it:

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2549466

I took it apart, cleaned it, reassembled it and still had the problem. For whatever reason it finally just went away and the pump's been working great for months now. I turn it off once or twice a day when my automatic feeder runs.

One thing they claimed might be a problem was that I had plumbed my return line with a check valve. Said they hadn't tested that situation. But I can't think of a good reason a check valve would cause that problem.

 

[cilyjr]

It's because of the back pressure on soft start pumps

 

[Reefer508]

I just had my Vectra M1 fail in the same manner, failing to restart after a feeding. It's over 1.5 years old but Eco-Tech support said they will replace it under warranty.

 

[mpsteve]

Yeah .. me too .. I have a feeling there must have been some sort of a power surge or something. My Apex "almost" failed too ... temperature on the tank dropped to 73.7 over night (yay big tanks!) ... apparently the display module was busted and it was making nothing on the apex "controllable" .. everything was in its fallback state. So spent good 2 hours this morning figuring that out.

And now, my snails are having a baby-party, so I can't even see inside my tank! I guess the temp fluctuation really got them in the mood hah! Entire tank is wicked cloudy.

I guess the only couple positives after all the above crazy-ness is:

1) I'm potentially going to be a grandfather to a million trochus snails
2) I see a few rock anemone babies in my tank!! WOOT!

- Archit

let me know when you have some of those snails to get rid of. you know how I love them. but anyways I used my Vectra m1 for almost a year and turned it off multiple times a day to feed fish and corals. now the m1 is on saltwater mixing duty. I replaced it with an l1 when I moved my sump to the basement and it shuts off multiple times a day and I have no concerns about it starting back up just like the rest of my ecotech brand equipment