Hydor Smart wave?

He's not trying to mimic tides. He's trying to introduce continually random flow. (It helps bring food to SPS corals, removes coral mucus and other coral waste)

 

I'm running one and there isn't really much to review on the product. It just flat out works the way they say it does. There are no surprises or things that you don't find out until after you take it home and install it etc. You just plug it in, plug your powerheads into it, set it to the mode you want (either alternating or in unison) and you set the time interval and it just works. I think it's a great purchase for the price. It provides my tank with more random flow and my corals appear to be doing a lot better with the pulsing flow as it roughly simulates the flow of the ocean.

I have mine setup to run both my powerheads in unison every 5 seconds.

This isn't the best purchase I've ever made for my tank, but it's pretty high up there.

 

What is the best one then just out of curiousity, sorry off topic.

 

To be honest the best wave maker would be buying a vortech powerhead. Most people don't have that kind of cash or don't want to spend that kind of cash on a powerhead. If you fall into this boat and you're just looking to create random flow in your tank then I would say the hydor smart wave is the best. For the price you just can't beat it.

With that being said though it's just a simple on / off nothing more nothing less. The vortech has various modes / speeds to create all kinds of random flow. I can't justify spending over 700$ though for 2 mp-40s though so I have 2 sicce 4 power heads with the smart wave and they seem to get the job done.