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One of my return pumps is acting up a bit and I want to replace it. I am using the Rio 14HF and want to go to the Mag 9.5. Any other ideas?

I can't say anything but positives about the mag-drive pumps. Twice I went away on vacation to have my auto top off fail me (off thankfully) and find the pump grinding away in an inch of water. Still works just fine. Tough as nails. I'd say the mag-drive choice would be a good one. 9.5 is good if you can't get any more gph.

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Critical Fertilator: The Micromanager of Macronutrients

I`ve had several people say I should go with the Mag 12. Might go this way.

Yep, if your overflow can handle more gph, that's what I'd suggest as well. I'm a big advocate of flow. It's hard to have too much as long as it's spread out.

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Critical Fertilator: The Micromanager of Macronutrients

Agreed, you can't go wrong with a mag-drive!

I've got a mag5 and it's never failed me yet. I don't have an auto topoff, so I've gotta manually add water to my tank. Yesterday morning, I lost power before I topped off the tank (it was a little low), so I wasn't going to dump FW into the tank and let everything go into shock without any pumps running to mix the water. I just left the tank and trusted the pump to restart on it's own and if it ran low before I got home from school (which it did), it'd be fine pumping dry for a few hours (which it was).

I've had problems with other brands of pumps not restarting after power failure, but I've never had a problem with my mag, and I've never heard of anyone having problems with them either.

And I'm agreeing with Matt on the flow, too. You may as well go with the mag 12 if your overflow can handle it. It's almost impossible to have too much flow (unless you put like a 50,000gph pump on a 10g tank or something insane like that) because you can distribute it throughout the tank however you want. Remember--reefs are pounded by waves 24/7... they can take the extra flow!

And when choosing your pump, remember to calculate head-loss (don't forget to include your piping length and number of elbows and whatnot)! Use the calculator on reefcentral

Good luck, mel!

Ordered the Mag 12 tonite. Thanks for all the help guys.