After receiving the Hydor Koralia in the other day I have had ample time to review these units. I’ll go over them thoroughly after the jump along with a host of pictures.
Hydor Koralia is the first besides Tunze to market a propeller type design to the Aquarium Industry. Tunze owns a lot of the market share right now, but that might change soon.
Hydor Koralia’s come in 4 flavors: 1, 2, 3, and 4. Simple enough. Hydor Koralia excel at mainly one major thing: cost. At 1/4 of the price of the lowest Tunze, these pumps can be bought very inexpensively.
Open feeling the units in my hands, these are cheaply made. And have a very basic design, I am cautious that these in fact might break in my hands as I place them into my tank.
Hydor Koralia’s magnets don’t hold very well on the 4 series, they hold, but I would be worried that they might fall off if they were on any thicker glass. (I am running them on a 75 gallon)
The actual prop design is very clever, in fact the reason they are so cheap is mainly because of how the prop design integrates in with the “motor”. These move water, especially the 3 and 4 series. The 1 series I would compare to a Rio 1200 pump in my honest opinion. You can move them in a lot of directions once mounted inside the tank, you don’t have full range though as how the magnets connect to the pumps. However, you do have more range than a Tunze Stream, but not more than a Tunze Nanostream.
So far I have tested on the Reef Keeper 2 with great success on the wave-maker mode. This is what runs my main tank gadgets. I am assuming that this will work with other controllers on the market. Hydor Koralia was noisy when first starting up, just an fyi.
Unlike tunze which install can be a bit of a headache unless you buy the magnet holder, these Hydor Koralia pumps are very simple to install. Take in out of the box, place it against your glass inside your tank and then apply the magnet to the other side of the glass, plug in and your done!
Overall I like these units, they are a great option for those working within a budget. They are a great option instead of moding a Rio pump, however, I own a Tunze, and this is no Tunze. So if you currently have Tunze’s rest assured that for the time being your not going to have to upgrade.
For the rest of you, leap up for joy that finally someone made a pump like Tunze for 1/4 the cost. I know I am.
See the Pumps in action!
Hydor Koralia Video Here (Requires the Latest Version of Flash)
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