The CoralVue Hydros is an interesting new device that the company is calling a ‘Wave Engine’. With so many of our aquarium pumps using DC motors and being controllable, we have a cornucopia of controllers, cables, wires and power bricks to run each of them separately.
The CoralVue Hydros aims to take some of the clutter out of having different DC pumps both for water flow and circulation. The first big advantage of the CoralVue Hydros is that a single power supply can power up to four different pumps, leading too much less clutter, but also less redundancy.
Various pump manufacturers either make good pumps, great apps, sometimes both, but it is definitely a pain to swipe-swipe through folders of aquarium control applications, and navigate to each one for adjusting settings and programming. With the CoralVue Hydros and accompanying app you can access virtually all of the features of each pump type through a single portal, perhaps in some case imparting more functionality than the stock controller provides.
CoralVue claims the Hydros Wave Engine is compatible with a wide range of contemporary DC return and flow pumps, including the Abyzz, Vario, Vortech, Vectra, Gyres, Tunze Nanostreams. You’ll need either an adapter cable or RF module to make the Hydros compatible with some of these models, while others rely on a simpler 0-10v connection. We look forward to seeing the Hydros Wave Engine for ourselves at the CoralVue booth at Reefapalooza so if you’re in town and into this sort of ‘master controller’ for water pumps, be sure and check it out. [Hydros]
