Finally, we have water in our 90-gallon rimless AGE aquarium, and with water comes the need for water flow, a crucially important aspect of any reef aquarium. We got our hands on a pair of Tunze 6055 Nanostreams, a pair of pumps we are greatly impressed with, and wanted to share their un-boxing with the rest of the reef keeping world. The seal on the box was excitedly peeled away, revealing a tiny yet powerful pump and one of the strongest aquarium magnets offered in the hobby. Mating the pump to the magnet is Tunze’s Silence Holder, which uses four rubber feet to prevent pump vibration from creating excess noise, despite the fact that the Nanostreams are already so quiet. The feet slip into the plastic bracket with ease, though they have a tendency of slipping out when adjusting the pump. The correction to this is as simple as reinserting them into the bracket, making sure the lip around the top and bottom of the feet are secured into the brackets. The feet also have a tendency of impeding the adjusting of the pump within the bracket, but this is actually an aspect I favor, as it prevents the pump from coming loose in the holder and pointing in an undesirable direction, for example one that causes a massive sandstorm.
More hands on with the Tunze 6055 after the page break.
Moving on to the pump’s controllability, the pump uses a power supply with adjustable voltage settings. If you don’t want to use a Tunze controller, you can manually adjust the water flow by moving the voltage slider on the underside of the power supply. Of course, the pump will stay at this flow rate until it is manually adjusted again. The voltage is adjustable from 12V to 24V, allowing the 6055 to push water from 264 to 1,453gph. Power consumption also varies with flow rates, starting at a mere 4watts and climbing to only 18watts. The 6055 Nanostream is just one of many Tunze electronically controllable pumps, though it is the only Nanostream that is currently controllable. The 6095 Nanostream will be controllable, but it isn’t scheduled to release until later this year. The flow on the 6045 can be adjust manually through a built-in plastic flow controller located on the underside of the pump, but it’s purely a manual control. To control the 6055, you would need a Tunze 7095 or 7096 multi-controller, or one of Tunze’s single controllers.
The reason we chose the 6055 pump for the aquarium build is not only for its controllability, but the fact that it’s a Tunze product. Tunze makes great pumps that are very reliable and get the job done. Sure, they are more expensive than a lot of other pumps on the market, but given Tunze’s long standing presence in the hobby, excellent customer service, and continual innovation, the decision was quite easy. The hardest part of picking out a pump was selecting the particular Tunze model we wanted to use.
