Cats LOVE it but hidden areas hold bacteria!
I've have this fountain for 5 months, but the regular model, without the adjustable flow feature. All 5 of my cats love it and drink regularly, even when the reservoir tank gurgles to fill the bowl since they're drinking so much at one time!

As with lots of other reviews, I do NOT use the filters as it restricts the flow of water down the ramp to almost nothing within a day. The pump is not strong enough to push the water through such a dense filter bag with very large chunks of carbon. I question whether the large size chunks do much good anyway. When the water can't flow past the filter to get to the ramp, it trickles back into the enclosed bottom reservoir where the pump is, thus making water sounds all the time, very annoying over the usually quiet of the fountain without the filter.

Since I use well water in the fountain and clean every part of it once a week, I found some very hard to reach and HIDDEN areas that harbor/grow the pinkish slime/bacteria that takes a contortionist to TRY and clean!!

Every hard edge around the back reservoir's interior and the upright brackets to align the pump need a cotton swab to de-pink their tight corners. Also, the removable grill area is very tight and requires swabbing the raceway areas. The channels in the filter reservoir also needs a long swabbing action to clean those tight angles where the filter would reside. And last and the very worst part to clean is the uptake column's inside AND into the curved spout where the water dumps into the filter reservoir!!

If the take up tube AND curved spout have goop in them that you missed, it will come out into the fresh water of your newly cleaned fountain, contaminating all the fresh water, and the process must be repeated. I've started PRE-running the pump connected to the filter reservoir that has the takeup tube into a separate bowl of water just to be sure I had it cleaned right before installing it on all that fresh water.

I love the fountain as much as my cats, but one must be diligent in thoroughly cleaning EVERY nook and cranny if you're using well water with the minerals etc. due to the propensity for slime build up. I use dish detergent, cotton swabs, a hemostat (used with swabs & paper towels), pipe cleaners for the tube and curved outlet, and wash out the clear reservoir each time as well with detergent before a problem starts.

I also have the blue model which is extremely hard to find, but really looks nicer than a white one showing stains and grime though you can still see junk in it when you have to. Remember to pull out the pump's inner magnetic cylinder with pliers or hemostats and swab around the metal pin, you'll see the pink residue on your swab as well as swabbing the inlet hole of the pump itself too.

This is NOT a ton of work to maintain the fountain, I just never saw these issues covered and thought it worthwhile to mention the cause of the slimy strings you may see in your water!! Definitely worth having to get your cats to drink water which is otherwise impossible ;)

great purchase
We bought one of these for our 4 cats over a year ago now and it has been a great purchase from day one. We do have to clean it once a week and fill it up with water twice a week but considering we have 4 cats, that is much better than we had it before with multiple water changes per day. The pump filter does have to be cleaned each week as well because hair gets caught in it. Total cleanup time is 5 minutes. Our cat love this, they never drink from the sinks anymore. They even drop their toy mice in the water bowl to play with them. The fountain can make some noise when the water flows back into the lower chamber but we found that by using filtered water going in we can eliminate the need for the internal fountain filter which prevents any noise via the water overrun inside the unit.

Worked for 6 months and died
The fountain worked for 6 months and the poor quality of the pump I noticed when I put it together came through and died on me this week. After reading another negative review, I will try the drinkwell.

Animals like it, not sure if I do
We adopted two kitties within the last year in addition to our two dogs, and I was concerned that the kitties weren't drinking enough. One was overly fascinated with the toilet, another wanted to drink out of the faucet at every opportunity (the dogs have no trouble drinking enough). I decided to give this a shot. After a brief period of "what's this?" the animals have all really taken a liking to it.

So far I have not had too much trouble cleaning it. I know it needs to be cleaned when it starts getting noisy. I just dump it out and clean everything with very hot water and a little scrubbing. A slime builds up around the pump and when it's cleaned away it becomes quiet again (about once a week).

I was hoping the reservoir on the jumbo sized model and the larger size meant it would last more than one day, but I find myself having to refill the reservoir *at least* once a day. If the water level goes below a certain point in the bowl, it starts making a grating sound. So, the true capacity is actually the amount in the reservoir (not much) because the rest of the water is in the right chamber circulating.

I quickly ditched the filters, as these seemed to block the water flow, causing it to make a loud trickling sound in the circulating chamber. The animals don't seem to mind. The benefit for them, I think, is just the cooler and aerated water.

So, the animals like it, but it is certainly not maintenance free. I considered sending it back, but they do seem to like it and my husband and I are forever ruled by our animals, it seems, so we decided to keep it. It performs its function (keeping fur friends happy) but with the caveat of creating more work for the pet owner...well, usually the case isn't it?

quiet, works great
We've had this product for several years for our three cats. It needs occasional cleaning -- at first I couldn't figure out why the pump quit, then I realized I needed to pull a glob of cat hair off the pump during cleaning-- but aside from that, it has had no problems at all. The cats drink from it and it means we do not have to refill the water all the time.

Two possible improvements on some future model-- a filter before the water gets to the pump (to remove hair), and a model with a significantly larger reservoir of water. (We'd love to let this go when we go on vacation for a week, but there's no way the water'd last that long. Wish I could somehow connect it to a 5-gallon jug of clean water!)

Overall, a great product that has worked for a long time. I'm buying another one so we have one upstairs and one downstairs, for our oldest cat's convenience.