Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Product Review 1: Monsoon RS 400

The posts got a little delayed due to me not feeling super great for a bit, but here they are! Bright, shiny and smelling like spring.

Also, I received my bag of Repashy today! Hooray!

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Product Review 1: Monsoon RS 400 by Exo-Terra

As you might guess, this is a product  I've been interested in from the very begining. Not only did the concept of a rainfall system seem way too cool to me, the idea of not having to worry about misting every morning, day and night really appealed to my lazy/forgetful side.

As such, I feel my expectations may have been pretty high from the get go. So, keeping that in mind, I'm pretty happy to say that the RS 400 met almost all my expectations!

Overall Rating: 8/10


Pros:
The pros are pretty much as I though; easy to use, easy to assemble, easy to fill, effective, and so on and so forth. I really feel as though I could leave for a couple days and not have to worry about watering... just feeding. But feeding has nothing to do with this system, so I can't fault it for that.
Aside from what I already expected, I have to say that the nozzles don't stick out quite as much as I was afraid they would. I kind of hid them away in the leaves, which you can see below in the pictures.


Cons:
Though the system is made to take advantage of the Exo-Terra terrarium's cable and tube conduits on the lid, I feel like the two systems weren't designed in tandem, especially with a foam backboard installed. The way I have it installed now, I feel as though there is way too much pressure on the tubing because there just isn't the right amount of room back there. To be fair, that's good in a sense. I don't want Rocza or his food slipping in back of anything. On the down side, should the tight squeeze puncture the tubing, that's a fine jet of water spraying all around my nice shiny electronic toys. I really wish I had a better place to put it... but till then, I'm keeping an eye on it, and I've reshuffled the room a bit to accommodate.
Also in reference to the space issue is the fact that the lid to the terrarium is now twice as hard to put back on, and it was tricky from the start.
Also, yeah, the nozzles aren't super obvious, but they're still very much present. I also find that though they do articulate, it's never quite the way I want them to be. Not a big issue though.


Comments:
Neither pro nor con, I noticed that too much hose means a crappy spray. What I though might have been a clogged nozzle actually turned out to be a lack of pressure due to the small hole and the length of tube. Once I trimmed the punctured part off, it worked just fine. Not bad for second hand, really.
The cycle light is also super bright. My computer has some nice lighting on it and... I mean it's almost on par with this one little light. Nothing a piece of tape or a sock can't fix...

NOTE: I've recently bumped this down to an 8, as from time to time, the nozzles start to spray pretty harshly. So far, I've been able to fix this by jiggling the tubing, but it's still annoying. Also, after reviewing the rest of the cons, it just didn't add up to a 9.


Images:
Left-hand nozzle coming out of the amapallo plant.

Right-hand nozzle coming out of the croton plant

My new canopy section, complete with feeding ledge.


Links:
Monsoon RS 400 Rainfall System - product page

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