Reef Mat - bad motors!

[Formulator]

I’ve had my red sea reef mat 500 for only 6 months and am now on to my THIRD drive motor! This is ridiculous, but at least Red Sea keeps sending me free replacements. It seems they don’t care to actually solve the issue and prefer to continue replacing with Chinese garbage motors until my warranty runs out and I’m SOL…

Rather than just sitting around angry and annoyed with Red Sea, I’m wondering if I can just find a better motor myself and retrofit it into the reef mat. Anybody been down this road yet?

 

[TX_REEF]

A better motor would be great, if you find anything let us know... only things I can think that might help would be reducing the flow rate through the drain to reduce the filtering load or increasing the mat advance length so it does not have to start and stop as often. What's your tank size? I asked because if you have a larger tank maybe the 500 is just being overloaded and you'd be better off with a 1200 which would catch more detritus before advancing the mat. Of course, purchasing a new reefmat is probably not a desirable expense

 

[Formulator]

Thanks. I have what I would call a “detritus-rich” 140 gallon system. So it very well may be overloaded. I can’t fit a 1200 in my sump without major modifications and cost is a bit prohibitive as well, so I’d prefer to make this 500 work more reliably…