A SICCE Nano Voyager Wave-Timer Test

I am a big fan of the new SICCE Nano Voyager pumps. At just over 2” long and over 500 GPH, these small powerheads are powerful and very quiet. I like them so much that I was actually tempted to see if I could replace my Vortech MP10’s with them in my nano aquarium. To find out, a wave-timer test was required. So recently, I had my test with SICCE’s own WAVE surfer wave-timer. Read on to hear how these pumps surfed in my tank.



SICCE WAVE Surfer

The SICCE WAVE Surfer is a nice little plug and play wave-timer that can accommodate aquarium powerbeads up to 100 watts. It has a feeding and sleep mode and retails for around $100 MSRP.


Setting Up the Test

The SICCE Nano Voyager pumps used in this test were only a few watts each, so there were no worries with wave-timer use and I quickly set the pumps in place across from each other on opposite sides of the aquarium and plugged them in.

With a quick dial-in on the wave-timer, the pumps were off and running.


Results

The Bad

Unfortunately, as is common with pumps on wave-timers, the Nano Voyagers gave off a noticeable ‘rattle’ on start up. One of the pumps were particularly louder than the other. I believe this rattle could be traced to the pump design. The impeller shaft is only supported on the base side. This may cause the shaft to pull on start-up and the impeller to oscillate briefly causing the rattle I heard. Perhaps if impeller went all the way through the impeller and was supported on the cover end as well, this would be resolved. Would this current rattle go down over time? I am not sure.

* I contacted SICCE about this and they found similar results. They say their Syncra Nano pumps are silent with this timer.




The Good

These little prop pumps put out the flow. When set opposite of each other across my two foot tank on the WAVE surfer, I really admired the alternating flow. There were nice ripples and waves with swirls where they collided.


Conclusion

The flow in my aquarium from these pumps on a wave-timer was impressive. If they were not noisy I would have seriously considered removing my MP10s as the noise from those bother me that much. That said, the rattle I heard was enough to end the test. I still love theses SICCE NANO Voyager pumps. If wave-timers are not your thing, or you just need to get rid of some flow dead spots in your aquarium, then by all means, check out these pumps. They are great pumps overall.

 

Great review Matt.

 

Any idea when these will be available?

 

They are supposed to be available now. I did have trouble finding them online a month ago. Hopefully that has changed.

Thank you sir.

 

sicce makes great pumps for sure!

 

The original Sicce Voyagers from several years ago had a bidirectional paddle type impeller so it did not matter which direction it ran, it pumped the same either way.

I did a review on them here:
First Impressions: Sicce Voyager 3 Powerheads

You can see a photo of the impeller in post #7. It looks like they have changed that so they are now more similar to the Hydor Evolutions and others. The disadvantage is as you have noted, it must be unidirectional so if the pump attempts to start in reverse it strikes the front cover or a bump stop causing it to reverse direction same as the Evolutions.

Matt, have you seen the new Jebao WP-10? How does it compare size wise to the Sicce Nano?

I have the WP-25 and as you can see in my photo here the 25 is larger than the Evo Nano 425 but not sure how the Sicce stacks up against either: