How Much is Too much?

[Blue Tang]

Hello again all, its been awhile since my last post , just two questions if thats ok, I was wondering how much water flow in the tank is too much ? some tanks that i have seen have a huge water movement in them. I have some soft corals , fluffies , some morphs, polyps etc , does it hurt them to have a high flow rate across them? also i have just bought a blue tang , he is still very shy although ive had it for two weeks is that normal for these guys , thanks for any replies , ps, the tank holds 600 ltrs i have two power heads that move 1800 ltrs ph , is that enough?

Blue Tang :mrgreen:

 

[Anonymous]

It is not the actual volume per hour it is the velosity that will get you in trouble. To much velosity and you can tear the tissue off of corals or kick up you sand bed if you have one. Currently in my tank I have about 60x turn over. My goal, once funding allows, is to get that up over 100x. I have no sand bed to worry about and some shaded areas for my LPS.

If you have just soft corals I would think any thing in the 20-40x turn over would be sufficent. Just don't point any power heads directly at a coral. Bounce it off one of the faces of the aquarium.

 

[Anonymous]

I have a powder blue tang. He is very shy and skiddish, even though he's been in the tank for months. I like how blue tangs put their face under a rock and think we can't see them!

I have always been impressed when I add more flow to my reef tank. Corals always seem to react positively. At the point my tank is now, I have a hard time keeping the substrate in one far corner because the flow ( and my wrasse) keeps blowing it out of that spot. I even have coraline growing there! But, I don't put any corals directly in front of the PH. The ones that are directly under or a few inches away have grown into the flow and seem to like it, growth is strong there. I have had to move a few softies to lower flow areas, though.

There was a AA article a bit ago about flow that might help you decide.

Good luck with your Tang! They are a hoot! Be sure to keep a piece of Nori on your magfloat for him.

 

[cindre2000]

The big thing that you are trying to do with flow is to get rid of dead spots. The dead spots accumulate detritus and generally have a lower level of oxygen. While powerheads can produce a bunch of flow, they generally have a lot of velocity and not very good spread. Tunze, Hydor Koralia, SEIO, and the "maxijet mod" powerheads do not have this issue since they use propellers instead of impellers.

So, the more flow in the tank the better, just make sure you are not blasting a coral with a high velocity jet of water.

 

[metalac]

do you think that the tank would benefit from changing flow? I have a 55 gallon and I have hydor coralia powerheads that can do 850gph. Do you think that it would be wise to have one turned on for say 6hrs on one side of the tank and then turn on the other one on another side of the tank for 6hrs? Right now they're both blasting away since I'm cycling the tank.

 

[cindre2000]

That does help; however, it can also wear out the pumps really fast.

 

[Anonymous]

I have a Wavemaster Pro if you are interested. How's the cycling going? I really need to trim my xenias.

 

[mr_X]

if you are to use a wavemaker for the koralias, you'll need one like the wavemaster pro, that turns the pumps on and off slowly, instead of an immediate power off-power on type of wavemaker, because they will rattle like crazy when starting.