I was able to switch back to the original hose this came with and it works so much better with the control valve! Would like to emphasize to let the pump run without the hose first when first turning it on! 10/10 would recommend.
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I was very hesitant to buy this given some reviews stating that they did not always get a water flow. However, I took my chances and bought a large dripper. What should have been a quick 10-minute setup turned into an hour-long trial and error.
First off, we very quickly found out that the pump is indeed on the weaker side and would not pump water from the provided hose attachment. We initially removed part of the hose from the drip gauge to see if it would help water flow a little more smoothly, which did work but the hose was too short to set the plant down outside of the bowl we were using. What we ended up doing was using a longer hose, which I just happened to have in hand as I had initially used a different dripping system, and given that there was no dripping valve attached the water seemed to flow a little better.
Once we got the water flowing and tried setting it up inside our actual chameleon habitat, the pump stopped working. It did take us a few tries to get it going again, and what we found out from this experience is that unattaching the hose from the actual pump and letting the water flow first gives it that extra "umph" to let the water flow a lot more smoothly through the hose once it's reattached (with the water still running).
The only drawback of not having the dripping valve is that the water is constantly running which isn't a huge problem in itself but the leaves are positioned in an odd way where the water scatters everywhere and very rarely actually falls in a straight line. What I ended up having to do is sew a couple of stitches to attach the very top leaf to the one beneath it to create a sort of crease that would help the water flow a little more straight. So, because I got a large and there are three leaves, I had to also sew the second or the middle leaf to the stem to keep it aligned with the very top leaf, so in total I had to put in three stitches.
I did provide a video for you guys to see the end result, as well as pictures of the stitches I had to place. I hope this helps anyone who is on the fence on buying this because, honestly, it was a good purchase but definitely a process to get set up and a lot of rigging.