Cove has been making a lot of progress penetrating the premium protein skimmer market in a huge way over the last few years. This week at CIPS they are keeping their foot on the gas by unveiling their first external protein skimmer design. The COVE E-320 is the company’s first external protein skimmer and like all Cove skimmers uses the fabled German AquaBee needle wheel pumps for producing a cloud of air and water in its large reaction volume.
The nearly commercial scale external Cove E-320 is roughly 24 by 22 inches in footprint adn almost four feet tall at 44 inches high. Cove certainly carved out a unique design for the E-320 and it’s quite distinct from other large external protein skimmers from Reef Octopus and Deltec. Both the air flow and the ‘bubble pressure’ can be adjusted and all the air intakes and accompanying air silencers are discretely hidden so there’s no unsightly hoses and cylinders in plain view.
In a surprising reversal of priorities, where some German skimmers are now using Chinese pumps, Cove has always been committed to using the best German made pumps from our friends at AquaBee. The COVE E-320 use not one but TWO powerful AquaBee up8000 needle wheel pumps.
The AquaBee UP8000 is a controllable DC pump with a maximum power of 50 watts for each pump s the Cove E-320 maxes out at 100 watts of high performance, needle wheel foam fractionation. The air intake for each AquaBee UP8000 is 2800 lph for a total of 5600 lph which Cove estimates will be sufficient for skimming marine aquarium displays between 8000-12000 liter ( 2000-3200 gallons). The controllers for both AquaBee UP8000 are elegantly mounted to the skimmer, and transparent volutes for each pump will allow the user operator of this protein skimming machine to keep a watchful eye on foam production and condition of the impeller.
As we’ve mentioned before in the past, Cove builds their protein skimmers to be durable enough to pass onto your kids, and the reputation of AquaBee is well known, so you should expect to pay right around $2999 for the COVE E-320 External Skimmer, debuting this week at the CIPS conference in China.
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