The Xaqua INOUT is an interesting aquarium gadget that really caught our eye more than six years ago, but which now is getting a renewed lease on life. Formerly called the X-InOut, the Xaqua INOUT is a combination drain and return fitting which neatly packages the needs of plumbing these fittings to your aquarium.
Rated for upwards of 660 gallons per hour, the INOUT is one of the more elegant ways to plumb up your tank with no additional fittings required, and it’s certainly cleaner than some stock bulkheads and PVC fittings. Furthermore, when you add up the cost of high quality bulkhead, some elbows and intake screens for the drain and some LocLine for the return jet, you start getting close to the price of a complete Xaqua INOUT.
But wait that’s not all! The real appeal of the Xaqua INOUT is an invisible feature of the device. When pumping water through at 500 gallons per hour or more, an unusual hydrodynamic feature arises from the INOUT creating a pulsing effect to the return water, which propagates into a very cool wave effect in the aquarium.
The wave effect of the Xaqua INOUT is most pronounced on the surface of the aquarium, but depending on your tank’s geometry and the placement of the INOUT, you can generate some pretty substantial wave action, simply from the pump for your return line. This is a very neat feature of this little black box which has yet to be fully harnessed by the aquarium community.
This year has seen a slew of new water draining accessories and devices for our aquariums, most of these have been skinny overflow boxes, but we’re glad the Euro-style Xaqua INOUT is getting another chance to be employed on our reef tanks. The Xaqua INOUT will retail in the neighborhood of $99 when it becomes available from Two Little Fishies, with optional soft silicone return line and vacuum hose drain line sold separately.
