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Building A Budget Reef Aquarium: Water Movement

In Part #6 of our 30-episode series on Building A Budget REEF Aquarium, I make water movement recommendations.

In this video, I tackle water movement on a budget. You may be asking, "Why do I need water movement?" In short, there are waves in the ocean that cascade over coral reefs. The corals have gotten used to those waves. Corals can't move, so the water movement allows food to come to them. It allows them to be cleaned off if things were to settle on them. But more than anything, corals are just really used to constant water flow, and if you take it away they can suffer and eventually die in many cases.

We want to replicate that water flow. There are a few options for how to replicate that water flow. One is a constant on/off AC pump, and that's what we're featuring in this video. We're just going to put these pumps in the tank, plug them in, and run them at a constant speed. This is a great budget option.

You may see options for DC pumps or controllable pumps, pumps that can speed up and slow down. Those are very nice options and it's what I do with my home aquarium. They're typically at a much higher price point, and they can better replicate those wave patterns. But this is a budget tank and we want to show you just how much success you can have with basic on-and-off pumps.

For this aquarium, we are using two Hydor Koralia Evolution 1500 GPH Pumps. These are the perfect size for a 4-foot reef tank like the one in this video series. Putting one on the right and one on the left, you tend to get much better flow patterns than with a single pump. It's tempting to just have one cord, one thing in the tank, but I'm telling you guys you're going to be much happier with two pumps.

These Koralia pumps are made in Italy, and they're high quality. They're going to last a long time.There are some very very cheap controllable DC pumps you can sometimes find. But in my experience they don't usually last more than 3-5 years, whereas these guys I've seen them last for 10 years.

There are a few features that make the Koralia pumps very practical for most people. They do have a screen that has holes wide enough that aren't going to plug up with stuff all the time, but fine enough they're going to protect small fish from getting sucked in. They also have a magnet mount. One magnet for the outside and one for the inside. This is better than suction cups because suction cups kind of suck. Eventually, suction cup pumps tend to fall off the glass walls, drop in the sand below, blow that sand everywhere, and create a little sandstorm. The Koralia magnets are going to stay in place. Just put one on each side of the tank pointing toward the middle and down.

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Building A Budget Reef Aquarium: Water Movement

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