Summing up

An electronic adjustable pump is one of the most amazing thing to have in our sumps, for several reasons. The simplicity with which we can adjust the power in order to adapt it to any conditions is priceless. For example I lower the pump flow rate when I do a water change, so I don’t have to switch it off completely while removing water from the tank. By doing this I avoid lowering tank water level and leave the pumps out of water. From the security point of view this 24V pump has made a really big step forward compared to those 220V pumps, and we hope all aquarium pumps will soon have this feature.

Today the price of 24V pumps is usually higher than others, but the Corallinea Big World BQ-5000L is offered at a very competitive price.

The conclusions chapter has never been so full of information, but we are now comparing this pump with other pumps’ measurements taken in the past.

First of all we see the recap table with the head, flow rate, power consumption, price and efficiency.

The values in red are those only estimated. They surely aren’t perfectly accurate values but we believe they can be used for our purposes.

The following table is even more interesting as we included measured values from other pumps such as Eheim, Tunze and Sicce which we tested previously and you can find on our reviews page. They have been ordered by the pump reference value which was measured as head*flow rate.

From table we can see that economically speaking the Big World BQ-5000L is more cheap. And it’s the best also for flow per watt, only the Tunze 1073.50 it’s very close with low flow rate but a better head with a similar efficiency.

Also buying the Big World BQ-5000L instead of the Eheim 1250 could be a better choice, thanks to an overall better efficiency.

The only difference could be only the reliability over time, but we can’t say anything about this. We can only stop at the actual measured values, and we can confirm that during our test we have not had any fault, nor diminishing in flow or head.

Let’s now compare those values with those declared by the manufacturer.

Head

The maximum head is 20% lower from that declared. the value is not that low, and we should consider the low price as well, while taking this feature in consideration before buying it.

Flow rate

As we have seen in previous reviews almost none of the pumps keeps their promises about flow rate, and Corallinea is not an exception, even though a 30% difference is not neglectable. We should always think in terms of price as well.

Power consumption

The power consumption is pretty much the same of the one reported.

Noise

There was no measure to compare this value to, but 38.3 dB is very good.

Global conformity to the declared value

Finally, we can give this pump a general value of correspondence to the declared values in terms of head and flow rate.

We could not consider the power consumption because of how we measured it.

To know if this pump is good for your situation, based on your aquarium head I suggest you read this article Return pumps: calculating the flow, you can download our excel spreadsheet and calculate if this pumps is the right one for you, providing the right aquarium-sump exchange needed.

Conclusions

The reference value of the Corallinea Big World BQ-5000L is of 1.415.616 l*cm/s, while the declared value should be 2.500.000. Remember that this value is obtained by head*flow rate simplified of their maximum values.

It’s a considerable loss compared to the declared values, as we have seen previously.

Nevertheless the pump only costs € 120, a very low price for a 24V adjustable pump, and its performances are respectable compared to those more expensive German or Italian pumps which costs more and have lower performances.

The only unknown variable is its reliability in time, but we haven’t heard about any faults of these pumps ever since they were presented. Feel free to use this article to comment and report any troubles you may have had with this product.

The manufacture, in plastic, is surely very cheap, with the pump resulting very light for its performances. The low price is the point on which the manufacturer and the Italian distributor are mostly relying on.

PRO

Low price
Direct current at 24V
Adjustable on 20 power steps.
High technical and economic efficiency.

CONTRO

Head and flow rate significantly lower than those stated by manufacturer.

Build Quality
Quality
Quality/Price Relationship

We thank Corallinea for providing the pump object of this trial.