Wave Maker or Vortech?

I have 2 Koralia 750's in my 55 (soon to add a 1050 thanks to Big Al!) and am using a Reef Angel to control them. They independently come on/off for a random time between 15-60 seconds. Total cost for the two 750's and the ReefAngel was about $275, and the Reef Angel controls everything else for my tank as well. This is half the price of one MP40.

Also, I am going to get the Hydor Smartwave for my 46 bow, which can either alternate the powerheads or have them both on the same time. Not as ideal as having each work independently, but still a step up from always on.

As already mentioned, the major benefit to the Vortechs are that the motor is not in the tank so it there is not the heat transfer, risk of electrifying the water, and takes up a little less space. Is it worth the money? If you are serious about the hobby and have a large reef tank, it just may be. For me it wasn't

 

You said 50x overturn, that's 4500 GPH. You would need 1 MP40 and one MP10 to achieve that. That's a lot of money, I would go with Koralias, Sicce (Also cost a good amount), CoralVue, etc IMO. But the sleekness and it's very fun to mess around with the settings, so I've heard.

 

Koralia Evolutions are specifically designed to operate on timers, wavemakers and controllers. The older Koralia 1 thru 4 were not designed for such and will fail quickly.

The Vortechs are a great idea but I have been less than impressed withe the several I have seen due to noise, quality control problems and failures and the crazy cost.

 

they claim that that the evos are designed for that however i have 4 of them ans they worked greay for a bit....... but they broke as usual and started running in reverse. still uae them just not on the wavemaker

 

Evolutions are guaranteed. Contact Hydor customer service and they will send you the repair parts free of charge no questions asked. It does not get any better than that.

 

Getting replacements wasn't an issue for me, it was just the constant cage breaking, having to contact Hydor and then waiting for the replacements to come.

The Evolutions were great but I enjoy my Vortechs a lot more now.

 

Constant?
My two 1400's are over 2 years old, switch every 30 seconds on a RKL and have had the front cage replaced once. Thats somewhere around 2.4 MILLION starts and stops and still going strong for like $45 total apiece. Thats a pretty darn good value to me.

 

Yeah I don't know why but the covers would keep breaking. Had 2 on the smartwave going back and forth, went through 3 replacements for each.

Not saying they're bad I just didn't have any luck with them at all.