Trido

After seeing your tank in person, and knowing how absolutely quiet you want it to be, I have to imagine you'll only be happy with Tunze. I still can't believe how quiet your reef is. Mine is closer in sound to yours when my return pump is off, which only happens 30 minutes daily during the feeding period.

To me, the more I see of the reef means the less I see of equipment. I don't want to look at any type of powerhead in my tank, clean or dirty. The Vortechs blend in far better for me and I am very pleased with the four I have on my tank. Three of them are in the tank room, and one is on the kitchen side, audible from my living room. I don't run it at 100%, and it is in a steady Reefcrest mode. The tiny sound I do hear is nothing. My return pump makes the tank sound like a babbling brook, so the pump isn't anything to be distracted by.

I prefer to hear my tank runnning an the surface agitation is significant as you may have noticed from my recent pictures posted. When I can't hear the tank, that let's me know there's a problem leading to a quick investigation.

I just did a fairly extensive search on RC, the biggest concerns seem to be noise, flow and looks. I really like the looks and flow of the vortechs. I guess I'll have to do some soul searching, or ask my wife, if the noise out weighs having the tunzes in the display tank. I all really boils down to levels of a quiet living room in my case.

If you have them on the back wall and the right wall, that would keep them all contained in your fishroom. I don't think the sound would be notable unless you had them in wave mode.

Using the MP40W on my tank I can say that it is a louder than the Tunzes and the Seios. I think its because the motor is on the outside. Me personally I'd go with the Vortechs. They take up less space in the tank, they use less energy and the motor being on the outside you won't have to waste extra energy to keep the tank cool. Another plus of the vortech is no stray voltage going through the tank because all the electronics are outside the tank. I have used all sorts of powerheads in my tanks with all sorts of gizmos and attachments to get a more chaotic flow with less pumps. The Vortech is the only pump that has given me the flow I want with minimal intrusion in my display.

You can't beat Tunze's ability to direct the flow output as well. Once your tank grows out, it is a nice feature. I have 2 6100's, a 6200, 2 waveboxes and a nanostream. Certainly satisfied. I've dealt with Roger on 4 different occasion to address problems and I've had botique service.

meh.

Just kidding, sort of. I've never seen the need to direct flow in my reef tanks, other than the return nozzles. I've used Maxijets and Tunzes and tried to orient the flow where I felt it should be, but once they were positioned I never moved them again. Same with the Vortechs.

Roger was very good in responding to any repairs I needed, every single time. Tim at Ecotech has done so as well. Either is a reputable company to deal with.

I have never had a Tunze pump so I can not say much about them. I have one MP40 in my tank now and I love it, one day I will get more hopefully. I will say when the thing ramps up you can definitely hear it. My tank is in the basement and currently I have it set to reef crest, but at first I had it set on a long pulse from max speed to min and man every minute or so you could hear it speed up through the floor into my bedroom. I also do love the fact that it is not to much of a eyesore.