What a let down from Koralia

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=12291100#post12291100 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by renisel
...If that's what they did, I have every intention of getting my hands on one and figuring out how to run their pumps without their controller--just out of spite if nothing else.

:lmao: :thumbsup: :lmao:
 
I recently purchased the Hydor Koralia Wavemaker 2 with 2 K 4's (12V) pumps and love em. So far, all I can say is nice job Hydor! The pumps are working smoothly and you hear no noise comming from the pumps and the wavemaker. I have been playing with the unit for a few hours and find that the best setting for my tank is the alternating effect every 2 seconds with the minimum 550 GPH and maximum 1,400 GPH. Its amazing how the pumps change speed so fast causing my corals to remain upright and swaying side to side. Its as if they are breefly blasted with a soft flow every 2 seconds comming from all directions. Water is being pushed back and forth and my fishes love it. The fact that I can have total control of the flow and that there is no more rattling noise from the old pumps is enough for me to offset the price of this unit (dang, Hydor should pay me for this information, LOL). All in all, I am very satisfied with it and highly recomend it. Here are some pics of the unit for all to see.

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I must be missing something here. The new Koralia's look nice but could one not have similar flow with a pair of Maxi 1200 with the SureFlow mods on a Red Sea Wavemaker Pro for much less money?
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=12322692#post12322692 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by roxy
I must be missing something here. The new Koralia's look nice but could one not have similar flow with a pair of Maxi 1200 with the SureFlow mods on a Red Sea Wavemaker Pro for much less money?

This was precisely my point from the begining, I'm not knocking the Hydor unit itself, I'm sure it does a fine job. I just couldn't believe how much they are gouging people with the price of this thing. Tunze is known to be high priced and their 4 way multi controller is half the cost and expandable. Hydor has been making some good quality products at reasonable prices lately and I just think they really dropped the ball with this latest offering.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=12323219#post12323219 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by smoothdog
This was precisely my point from the begining, I'm not knocking the Hydor unit itself, I'm sure it does a fine job. I just couldn't believe how much they are gouging people with the price of this thing. Tunze is known to be high priced and their 4 way multi controller is half the cost and expandable. Hydor has been making some good quality products at reasonable prices lately and I just think they really dropped the ball with this latest offering.

The price of the tunze multicontroller is a bit misleading, because you need to spend so much for the pumps that work with it -- $220 being the price of the pump equivalent to the hydor 4. I'll be interested to see a comparison between the hydor 4-way and the tunze 7095. While it's true that the tunze is a 4-channel controller, for most applications it's 2-way. I think (not certain, but pretty sure) that only the random and sequential modes are truly 4-way. Usually, all pumps on one of the two channels are doing the same thing. Even in sequential mode, I think the delay between channel 1.1 and 1.2 (and 2.1 and 2.2) is only one second.

I'm not really sure if you can compare what tunze, and now hydor, is doing to the wavemaker pro. As I understand it (never owned one) you have a choice of 4 preset options with the wavemaker (and with most other wavemakers). Tunze and now Hydor aren't really competing with that so much, I don't think -- they are trying to appeal to the market of people that want to be able to tweak everything about the system, from the exact time of the interval to the exact time and strength of the pulsing action. With the tunze 7095 and two (or four or eight) 6055 pumps, your options are really pretty much unlimited between 400 and 1500 gph per pump. Whether all that tweaking makes any difference is another whole question, but I think that's the market tunze and now hydor is appealing to.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=12320347#post12320347 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by newyorkstyles
I recently purchased the Hydor Koralia Wavemaker 2 with 2 K 4's (12V) pumps and love em. So far, all I can say is nice job Hydor! The pumps are working smoothly and you hear no noise comming from the pumps and the wavemaker. I have been playing with the unit for a few hours and find that the best setting for my tank is the alternating effect every 2 seconds with the minimum 550 GPH and maximum 1,400 GPH. Its amazing how the pumps change speed so fast causing my corals to remain upright and swaying side to side. Its as if they are breefly blasted with a soft flow every 2 seconds comming from all directions. Water is being pushed back and forth and my fishes love it. The fact that I can have total control of the flow and that there is no more rattling noise from the old pumps is enough for me to offset the price of this unit (dang, Hydor should pay me for this information, LOL). All in all, I am very satisfied with it and highly recomend it. Here are some pics of the unit for all to see.

18715034-med.jpg


18715035-med.jpg


18715036-med.jpg


18715037-med.jpg


18715038-med.jpg


18715039-med.jpg


1871501-med.jpg

lucky dog!
 
OK, to adress what smoothdog and roxy are saying I am gonna go easy on the wavemaker pro I owned for over a year since it had sentimental value to me for the duration of the time I owned it LOL!

First off the wavemaker pro has very limitted options when it comes to wave making. When I connected 2 Koralia 4's in the first 2 slots of the wavemaker pro, the 2 pumps would alternate for 10 seconds each, shutting one off and running the other (you cannot change this time, it is preset on the unit). I hated this feature because this is not what happens in the ocean. The ocean moves as a whole body of water causing corals to stay up right and move side to side. They dont move for 10 seconds all the way to one side hitting the ground and then do the same to the other side. Not only is this stressfull to the corals but it is very unpleasing to look at. Then comes the option of switching the pumps to other slots on the wavemaker causing both pumps to run simultaniously and virtually blasting the living daylights out of my corals. This was another feature I hated especially for my goniopora and bubble coral. Both corals suffered because of this. Adding a wavemaker pro and 2 maxijets 1200 are going to offer you what I've just explained minus the rattleling noise when the K 4's shut on and off. If you are happy with this kind of flow in your tank than that is the way to go for you.

I, on the other hand wanted full control of the pumps. First, the fact that they both run simultaniously at minimum and maximum flows makes the corals remain upright and sway from side to side while being blasted with soft flow bouncing from all directions. Not onlly can you set the alternating times from 2 seconds to 6 hours, but you can also change the minimum and maximum speeds of each pump resulting in you obtaining the desired flow for your tank (wavemaker pro doing this, haa haa haa, not in a million years). This unit also has a synchronous effect which I havent really messed around with yet since I've only owned the unit for a week and the alternating effect is doing the job just fine.

Also, let me not forget to mention that each pump changes from minimum to max speed is .5 seconds, (wavemaker pro, LOL, definate no, no). I have not even begun to list all the details of this unit but all I can say is I am happy with it. I dont usually buy new products without others testing it incase it fails but when I saw the 2 year warranty on it, all I could say was send me the unit!
 
For those who were interested in the idea of hooking these pumps up to the much cheaper Tunze controller, I have found that this will not work. These pumps run on 12V AC, not DC (the Tunze uses DC). I drew up a design for a basic controller that will control one pump for about $50 and can be easily and cheaply modified to control more pumps. The parts are on their way, and I'll post my results in a few days.
 
For those who were interested in the idea of hooking these pumps up to the much cheaper Tunze controller, I have found that this will not work. These pumps run on 12V AC, not DC (the Tunze uses DC). I drew up a design for a basic controller that will control one pump for about $50 and can be easily and cheaply modified to control more pumps. The parts are on their way, and I'll post my results in a few days.

I kept wondering in the back of my head about that but had never heard of anyone using low voltage AC for something like this.
If that DIY controller works out and you have the time to take a few pics while you're working on it, I think that would make a great thread in the DIY forums!
:D
 
12V AC? Are you sure?

I assumed they'd follow the same model as Tunze, and use a PWM scheme to alternate the duty cycle on a DC waveform. Tunze allows the voltage level to be set on the power brick (12v to 24v), thereby controlling the maximum output on the pump.

That's how Tunze is able to keep the cost of their Singlecontroller down -- there are no expensive higher-power components in them, just the waveform generator and some glue logic. All of the power handling stuff is included with the pump.

Apparently, Koralia moved the power-supply components into their controller and drove up it's price. Sure, the pumps *look* inexpensive but their true cost is tied up in the controller. Really, the complete opposite of Tunze's business model, where the pumps look expensive, but the entry level controller is relatively inexpensive.

Don't make the mistake of comparing the Koralia controller to the $350 Tunze Multicontroller -- it's more along the lines of two Singlecontrollers (about $100 for a pair). The Tunze Multicontroller has many more features than the Koralia controller. Apples and oranges.
 
This stinks though because I wanted these pumps to atleast be aquasurf compatible, but it doesn't look like that it going to happen.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=12325376#post12325376 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by hyperfocal
12V AC? Are you sure?

I assumed they'd follow the same model as Tunze, and use a PWM scheme to alternate the duty cycle on a DC waveform. Tunze allows the voltage level to be set on the power brick (12v to 24v), thereby controlling the maximum output on the pump.

That's how Tunze is able to keep the cost of their Singlecontroller down -- there are no expensive higher-power components in them, just the waveform generator and some glue logic. All of the power handling stuff is included with the pump.

Apparently, Koralia moved the power-supply components into their controller and drove up it's price. Sure, the pumps *look* inexpensive but their true cost is tied up in the controller. Really, the complete opposite of Tunze's business model, where the pumps look expensive, but the entry level controller is relatively inexpensive.

Don't make the mistake of comparing the Koralia controller to the $350 Tunze Multicontroller -- it's more along the lines of two Singlecontrollers (about $100 for a pair). The Tunze Multicontroller has many more features than the Koralia controller. Apples and oranges.

I have a decent knowledge of some areas of electrical engineering, but motors and control methods are not within what I'd consider my area of expertise. However, I thought that PWM was typically used to essentially simulate an AC waveform without having to actually create a sinusoidal wave. So, any electrical motor that runs on a PWM signal should also run on sinusoidal AC, and vice versa. I fed the Koralia pump a 12V DC signal and just got a brief click, as if it was making a partial turn. I then fed it a 12V AC signal, and it worked just fine.

My previous statement that the Tunze controller and Koralia pump wouldn't work together was based on the assumption that the Tunze uses a plain DC signal. I haven't yet received the Tunze controller I was going to hook up to the Koralia pump, so maybe it will work if it uses PWM. However, based on the relative prices of their controllers and pumps, I'm inclined to think that maybe the controller does put out a plain DC signal that controls electronics inside their pumps that convert the DC input into a PWM signal that drives the motor.

Regardless, the 12V AC signal seems to drive the pump just fine, so I'm planning to build a variable frequency controller to run the Koralia. The design I've put together would just switch between two frequencies (i.e. two speeds) at controllable intervals. It certainly doesn't have as many options as the Tunze or Hydor controllers, but it's enough to create alternating flow patterns, which is all I really want.
 
Sounds cool. Are you alternating between full and half wave rectification of a 60 Hz AC signal, or doing something fancier?
 
Will older model pumps work with this controller or do you have to buy the new pumps with the controller?
 
It will be powered by a 24V DC power supply. A 555 timer with single-rotation pots controlling the durations of high and low speed controls a DPDT relay. That relay switches between two resistor values on a Wien bridge oscillator built around a high-current-output op-amp. Modifying it to control more powerheads would just require replication of the circuit if you want them independently controlled, or simply hooking up another outlet to the end of the circuit if you want them synchronized.
 
dam that sucks so I guess there are going to be alot of the older model pumps for sale on the selling forum soon,
 
can the koralia 4 work on 3/4 inch acrylic? The vortech has problems with acrylic and overheating and causing it to crak, any one using these on 3/4"
 
Might as well get a Reefkeeper II and a bunch of maxijets with mods. Will be a lot cheaper, can run three pumps and also have the functionality of the controller.
 
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