Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Brilliant timing on this thread !

I spent Sunday pulling apart my two ACO-012 pumps as they both died after running since March. Yep, didn't bother getting back to Guppy's - service has always been crap in my experience.

So, I ended up replacing both the gaskets cut out from some cork&rubber gasket material from Auto 1 - cost $15.

Diaphragms were also rooted - replaced these with some that I cut out of the bottom of a silicone baking tray - cost $8.

The ACO-012 is a fairly big pump (120L/min). If you have some of the smaller ones (and I do) you can buy the silicone cupcake pans and simply cut the bottom out of them as it is the same size as the diaphragms (in the ACO-04).

I have some piccies and will put them up this morning.

Happy to answer any questions

Photo's will be good I haven't seen one apart yet, apparently that silicon rubber you can buy a 1m2 sheet from clark rubber for about $10 should last forever, that's what the aquarium shops do from what I was told anyway!

Yeah, the silicone should last indefinitely, but if not I'll definitely be down to Clarke's Rubber !

OK, photos as promised, with detail in the captions

The old diaphrams look like heat has destroyed em, the baking tray rubber should be more tolerant, Let us know how it goes, how long did you get out of the old ones?

Yeah, I'm convinced it was heat too. Also admit I'm not too surprised as through the winter they were in an enclosed container, with some ventilation. However, the heat buildup in there was significant at times.

Yep, reckon the silicone should last a long time. More concerned about the gaskets, but I'll see how they go. Could always make them out of thick silicone if I have to.

I started using those pumps in March.

cool now the test of time. Have you thought of using some old computer cooling fans in your enclosure!

Starting to, as part of the overall ventilation improvement that will be happening once I have the shade sail up over the GBs.

hi to all ..thanks for the reply.
#$%#$ Guppy's aquarium have not yet reply or replace my diaphragm. guess i have to write -it off with them.... my you, not till i bagged the crap out of them.

i have gone to Aquotix in bannister rd but they don't have that size and cannot tell me whether their supplier can get them. i need the diameter to be 4.5cm and 0.2mm for thickness.

i went to clark rubber as (pjenkyn) suggested but they don't have them. They only have the smallest thickness size of 1.5mm rubber type (not silicone type) and anyway i think it is too thick. If you can tell me which clark rubber that sell 0.2mm or close in thickness i would be really great full

thanks also to your thread Privatteer , my diaphragm actually broke.

Looking at the photo posted by chillidude ,the piston parts look very similar to my one.
So chillidude did your ACO-012 pumps work good after you replace them with silicone baking tray material? i did have a look at the material ..they are are quite thick 1-1.5mm thick. Does the thickness of the material matter in this case??? please advice

Yep - they've been going for a week now and appear to be fine.

Yeah, the baking tray base is pretty thick, would easily be 1mm and I suspect more, but I'm not at home so can't meaure it.

Within reason, I don't think the thickness matters. As long as it's not too stiff, there's no reason it can't act as a one-way valve.

Going with that greater thickness was a leap of faith, but it seems to function fine.

If your pump is smaller than an ACO-012, don't forget that I mentioned that for my smaller pumps I used the bottoms out of the individual silicone cupcake pans (as in the piccy below) - these were certainly thinnner than 1mm.

[quote="stargate"]hi to all ..thanks for the reply.
#$%#$ Guppy's aquarium have not yet reply or replace my diaphragm. guess i have to write -it off with them.... my you, not till i bagged the crap out of them.
Just be careful of [bagging the crap out of anybody ] i think you will find most air pump failures is operator problems the correct way to use air pumps is have a mainline coming from the pump with a valve on the end then setup your air stones and then gradually turn off the valve till the air stones are working most people get 100 litre a minute air pump and use 30 litre a minute
resulting in a pressure buildup and over heating my big electromagnetic air pump ran a fish hatchery for 5 years and been here 3 years and it runs so cool that you can easley hold your hand on it the only time it gets hot is summer its in the sun in the glasshouse

That's a good point Milne - might try hooking my whole system up to the one pump and see how that copes, over the weekend !

thanks chillidude for that picture of the silicone cupcake mould. not all coles sell them apparently...must still look for them.

thanks FF .....fair enough comment but i think i used my correctly. i have 8 lines coming out of it as per suggested ,so no back pressure build up there.

as to bagging them.... what kind of mickey mouse business are they running where the only contact with them is an email address and not have the @#$%# to reply to let you know of an outcome. i rang AVK imports which is their parent company..but it just rang out . no-one pick up the phone . don't believed me try it. they need to communicate to customers (in business we call it customers care/services) to keep them posted on what the outcome. if they don't want to replace it or even laughed at me for doing my dough with them .... at lease let me know...not just not reply to my email that i send again and again to them. would you not agree ? Can you see any reasons why i'm not as mad as hell with them.

The thing is with a main line you can have as many or as few pumps as you need you can have your standby emergency pump all on the same line heres a photo of the end of my line 20 metres from the pump you will note the tap is right off as with bigtrout you can never have to much air

Hi just looked up guppys site thats one pump i would not buy all of the others with the open cage in my book are heaps better

To late to edit
also looking at the site i said will run up to 30 airstones you are running 8 meaning theres a heap of backpressure