flow

[onecrzyboi4u]

ok.. someone please help me out.. with this dang flow issue.. I keep hearing on the low side.. then i hear i'm on the high side.. in my 29 gal long. i have a koralia 1 and amaxijet 900 and a 301 powerhead all running.. is that too much flow?


corals- cabbage, open brain, sponge, spagattie, 2 toadstools, zoos and monti. planning on some xenias, trumpets and kenya tree

I have a BTA

[reefnetworth]

what is the GPH combined?
MJ-900 + Korlia 1 = GPH?
10 times the amount of flow to the total water volume is what the minimum should be.
290 GPH minimum. do not include PS.

[onecrzyboi4u]

654 gph all together

[onecrzyboi4u]

PS? hmm so i have too much flow in my tank?

[marduc]

No that is not too much flow. 10X turnover is a starting point to shoot for, but IMO not nearly enough. I have roughly 40x turnover in my tank, and many who keep sps corals predominantly will go to 50x +

Just so long as there are no problems with the flow shooting sand around, and the flow is coming from a few separate outputs, and not one huge concentrated blast you are ok. Try to get your pump outputs to either bounce off each other, or off the rocks or glass so that they create random flows within the tank, and know where your high flow areas are in your tank, so you can place the appropriate coral species there.

[onecrzyboi4u]

Ok next question.. do you really need to to let your powerheads hit the waters surface? thats been a big issue for me too

[marduc]

Whether you use the powerheads to provide surface agitation varies from tank to tank, and set up to set up.

No you don't HAVE to have them breaking the surface. Potential reasons why this would be advantageous though would be if you did not have sufficient gas exchange in your tank (skimmerless/sumpless setups especially), or if you have a problem with a surface film building up on your water (again mostly for sumpless systems, or overflow set ups not working optimally)

[awesomefrog]

it seems like it would be pretty difficult to ever make too much flow in a reef tank, but you could have the wrong kind of flow. when i have been in the ocean and felt the waves and currents the water is turned over like every second, but it's spread out everywhere rather than a just squirting out a return line.