80x Turnover, bottom setup?

[Kinetic]

I am planning some flow options for a new tank, but I'm having trouble deciding and was hoping you guys could give me a few suggestions based on your experience / research.

The tank is 36" x 20" x 22" and I will be using extremely porous rock from reeferrocks (about 45lbs) and some 5+ year old live rock from an established tank.

I'm planning to stock it full of SPS, though with a few zooanthid islands here and there =)

For flow, I was thinking about these two options:

A. 4x Tunze 6045's amounting to about 4740gph, with a 800gph return (which has outputs to two spray bars)
B. 2x Tunze 6055's amounting to 2400gph w/ a multicontroller to give it some fun variance, and the 800gph return.

Now I know for Option A, there will be something like 80x turnover. There will be plenty of turbulence which is good without the need for a controller. But would a short sand bed totally dissapear with this much flow? What options would I have in terms of the bottom? Should I go bare bottom?

For option B, there is much less flow, but I can control the pumps to different variable gph's. This also costs twice as much as option A. Since there's less gph, maybe a short sand bed is possible?

What would you suggest in terms of flow and sand bed? I"m using the sand bed purely for aesthetic reasons, as I will be running a remote DSB as well for NNR.

Thanks!!

[RichConley]

<-- Have sand. See signature for flow.

[Leonardo_]

IMO, go for option one. I'm not sure if you can have sand with that amount of flow. I have a 88x turnover, and the sediment (sand-like) coming out of the LR is blown into the overflow!

But I think it is a matter of directing the flow. Maybe you can have sand when you point the streamers well.
My experience is that the direction of the flow and the placement of the streamers matters a lot.

Leonardo

[trueblackpercula]

BB all the way

[RichConley]

Honestly, make the decision on what you like. You can keep sand with that tank (I've got way more flow than that), but you have to choose whether you want to.

[esco]

option 1 bb. you can live w/o the sand

[Kinetic]

Thanks for your input!

The tank is being built with the bottom painted white just in case I want to go BB.

I'm not a fan of corraline on the bottom of bb tanks, and was thinking of going with those black spined urchins to see if it'd eat all the corralline, but then this will be an acrylic tank, so it might damage the acrylic when going for the coralline.

I'll start off with a short sand bed, and heck, if the flow is just too strong, it'll blow it all away anyways and go bb naturally

[chadfarmer]

i have a 58 close deminsions i have a 6100, 2- 6000 and a seio 1100 and a eheim 1260 return

but i dont have sand

[Kinetic]

chadfarmer: do get any detritus buildup at all on the bottom of your tank?

[DrBDC]

I have sand. I was at 58.8X turnover and had southdown. I upgraded tank sizes but used the special grade reef sand on this tank and added a couple of the high flow mjmods for more flow so I'm at about 90X turnover now. I'm getting some movement and the sand is seeking out how it wants to be aquascaped but not extreme. I'm still playing with exactly how to aim the ph's.

[gasman059]

sand sand, on my setup i'm currently upgrading my flow, I thought about 4 1200 mjmods since i have a mixed setup i might just mod 2 and leave two stock. Just to see if not satisfied then 3 and so forth . Turnover should be anywhere from 50x to 80 x , nothing is written in stone and it varies according tio your grwoth and population. Go with wat u like , for me sand and mixed setup is wat i like, I chose an are of my setup for sps maily the middle and that's the area that will accomodate my initil 2 1200mjmods. hopefully this will take care of that. Hope this helps

[chadfarmer]

a little in the corners