The Maxspect Turbine Duo is a radically new pump design that we know reefers will love. Much like the Gyre pump, the Turbine Duo has a centrally mounted motor which powers two water moving assemblies on either side. However unlike the Gyre, the Turbine Duo has two centrifugal impellers and volutes for pumping water two separate places!
Let’s just forget for a second how radical this pump’s design is and examine its merits based on specifications alone. The Maxspect Turbine Duo pushes up to 2,500 gallons per hour with a maximum power consumption of 65 watts! Maxspect has been kind enough to put together this chart comparing their new pump to some of the leading controllable pumps on the market.
The Turbine Duo is no slouch compared to the Abyzz, Vectra and Vario, and the one category in which it’s trailing is in head pressure. It’ll pump up 2 meters or six feet from the sump to the tank no problem but if you need to pump up one floor, better consider something else.
However, now let’s get back to the fact that this pump has TWO freaking outlets! You can’t control the speed of each volute separately but you can direct them to different places. So if you’re splitting your return line to the tank, now you can go ahead and do this natively, or you can combine the flow with a specially designed Y-adapter which is included with the Turbine Duo Pump.
But really the Turbine Duo will really shine in applications where a separate water line is required to feed any number of accessories, notably a chiller, recirculating protein skimmer, or a manifold to feed a variety of media reactors. The ghetto way to accomplish this is to tee off the main return line, but this is not practical for fine tuned flow rates since any change to one valve will alter the others.
The professional way to accomplish this is to simply use a separate pump, which is something I have done on all of my more equipment-intensive setups I’ve done for myself and others. Having a second pump is the best way to have consistent flowrate to your chiller/recirc skimmer or manifold, but obviously it’s more expensive, takes more space, and adds more heat.
With the double outlet Turbine Duo Maxspect is not only pushing the envelope in terms of form factor and functionality, but it’s actually stretching the budget of reefers who desire to do more with less – that’s all of us right? Besides the limited head pressure the only other major ‘drawback’ to the Turbine Duo is the fact that it’s designed for internal use only, which should be fine because most reefers prefer to use internal pumps anyway, to reduce noise and the need for drilling bulkheads and potential leaks.
I haven’t yet even been able to mention how small this pump is, or the fact that you can use it with a single volute to further reduce its footprint, and the fact that Maxspects packs it up with every conceivable plumbing part you could ever want to use with the Turbine Duo. At $320 Maxspect is firmly in a territory of affordable performance and value, and of course it will be compatible with the IPV6 for wireless control, and interoperation with the Recurve, Ethereal, Gyre Pump and whatever else they have up their sleeves.
It doesn’t take a crystal ball to foresee that they’ve got to be working on a needlewheele version of the Turbine Duo. With MACNA coming up in New Orleans next week attendees should all be able to get a good look at this exciting new pump design so stay tuned for full coverage, and further details on the Maxspect Turbine Duo double-volute controllable aquarium DC pump.
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