Little behind-the-scenes story:

During the spring of last year, while I was talking to my friends at Ecotech Marine, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that they were working on a project called Versa. After asking more about it, I found out was that it will be the first official product to work under their new mobius system and that this is a peristaltic pump with the ability to control all your dosing needs, handle auto top-off, automatic water changes, and even feeding (depending on the particle size of course).

A few months later, during MACNA, they displayed it in their display tank like a easter egg. Many people were surprised to see it in the wild. During Reef A Palooza Chicago, I was invited to ETM’s invite only party to industry partners to see the see the Versa in full action.

Here is their mix machine from the party. Fun times were had. Drinks were mixed to perfect proportions.

With that out of the way, let’s jump right in! 

Here is Versa single head doser in it’s full glory! What do we know about it? Let’s discuss what’s important when you are choosing a doser for your systems.

Precision is to me is one of the two most important aspect of any dosing pumps. For a pump that will be utilized for various things like dosing trace, aminos, elements, water changes, and auto top off, it’s imperative that the amount of fluid going in and out is accurate and dependable.

You can see the gears on the left. The teeth on the large gear on the outside show how many times that it can stop per sec/ per min to provide that kind of high accuracy.

In their official statement, the company states that Versa is accurate to 2% or less and capable of several hundred ml. a minute.

Build Quality. 

The second thing that I consider to be most important aspect of the doser and all equipment in general is build quality and the durability of the equipment. Holding this in my hand and messing around with it, I have to say that this is one of the most solid, well built products that I have come across to date. Doing what I do, I have used many dosers so for me to say this means that I am extremely impressed with this aspect of the equipment. What I also liked and that is relevant to this was that everything was built in Pennsylvania (even saw the President of the company put together the pump from start to finish) so the higher standard of quality control was applied here which should be reassuring to many of us that demand and expect higher standards from our dosers that can either make or break our tank.

Silence.

Most of us running aquariums are doing so in our homes. For me, silent operation is a must. This thing is talking my language running at low to med settings and it should be a huge plus point for many of you guys as well. If you are cranking it to full power, you will hear some noise but you can expect it to be quieter then many of the premium dosers in the market.

Mobius platform. 

A highly anticipated next gen system from Ecotech was finally released to the public with this product. As a person that was beta testing this platform well over a year before it was released, I was really happy to see that the moment was finally here. You can see the sneak peak video that I made with Ecotech Marine last year showing off the platform and the functionality below:

As you can see from the screen shots above (thank you Deven of Reef Dudes, I didn’t have 4 unit model like he does) he has all the units linked up, configured, and scheduled accordingly to fit the needs of his reef keeping. Calcium reactor, automatic water changes, ATO, and just using it as how it is advertised. Ultimate utility doser.  Ecosmart Live, while great during its time, had its limitations and I think a new system that offers more control, redundancies in place, and flexibility while providing solid connection is a step in the right direction.

Connection. 

They changed the connection type from WiFi to bluetooth. I am thinking that they did this because many pieces of equipment are using 2.4ghz and many homes have signal interferences and their ISP only gives them 5ghz instead of an option for both.

I haven’t experienced the need to control the equipment outside of the house yet but I have to admit that I miss having that option and I hope that they will reconsider having some options where we can control equipment using mobius over WiFi.

I was told that cloud is something that they will be working on. No date or information was given but it will be an update that  I will be looking forward to!

Attention to small details. 

One of the things that I really like was how everything was shielded minus the wires and having John Guest fitting for you to insert the tubing. Insert and done. No need to try to wiggle the wire into the plastic tube.

Clean installation should be on everyone’s mind when installing any equipment. Back piece comes out for you to screw that into the location of your choosing and you can slide the doser into the place, which doubles in effectiveness when you have take it out for maintenance. Simple slide out, replace the hoses, and slide back makes things so much easier which will encourage users to keep up with the maintenance of their valuable equipment.

Versa is a high quality, very flexible, accurate pump. If you are in market for one, you can remember the positive points of this unit.

1.) Build quality/ Durability

2.) Ecotech support

3.) Accuracy

4.) Silent

Cons.
New mobius platform utilizes bluetooth only. (For now) While you do have traditional Ecosmart live to utilize WiFi if you need,  if you are deadset on uniforming everything to mobius , this is something that you should know before purchasing. Wasn’t a deal breaker for most but I want you guys to be informed as much you can from this review!

As of this review is going out, the single head unit of this doser costs $149.99 and the 4 head unit costs $599.99. While this may seem expensive to some and I understand that it may not be for everyone, remember how much you have invested in your aquarium and what kind of role dosers play in your system. Just something to ponder. There are many great ones out there, find one that meets your needs and your budget. Just be sure to get a quality product from a company that will stand behind it.

Hope this helped you guys in making some decisions if you guys are in the market for a new doser(s)! Have a great day and happy reefing!