Waterflow High or Low?

[ReefJeff]

Hello friends,

My 50 gallon reef has 3 powerheads connected to my wave maker.

1 Powerhead - back/left corner high
2 powerhead - back/right corner high
3 Powerhead - front/right corner high

I also have an Aquaclear 110 moving water as well as a protein skimmer to some degree. The placement of my life-rock goes about 3/4 of the way up the tank positioned in almost a horseshoe pattern from left/front to the back then to the right/front.

Most of my SPS corals are in the front of the tank. With that said, with the flow of my powerheads, is that enough water movement for the corals?

The powerheads and not very fast, just enough to make the water flow around the tank.

Should they be positioned high as I have them now or should I move one to say the lower part of the tank to move water on the sandy bottom?

Thank you,

ReefJeff

 

[Krish]

What are your powerheads rated at in terms of gph? It's hard to say without seeing the tank in action. What I use to do to test things to see if my flow needed adjustments or additional flow was required was toss a small pinch of flakes in the tank and watch where the current took it. Just by observing, you can see where you have dead spots etc. However, just going by a few setups I had with powerheads, I've noticed I had best coverage when I had one powerhead on either ends of the tank, and pointed them both to the front center of the tank where the flow would colide (as seen in the sketch below which is a top down view). This made nice random flow everywhere in the tank. I would probably say mid way down is a pretty good spot and then one probably up higher to create surface aggitation if it is not created by a return pump from the sump already. Just a personal thought.





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[ReefJeff]

Hello Krish,

Thank you for the information. I am using 2 Hydor Koralia Evolution Pumps
Evolution 750 and 1 Aquaball Powerhead
172 gph. I have the Koralia in each back corner pushing toward the front as per your diagram just breaking the surface water. The aquaball is in the front right corner running to the left side of the tank.

 

[Krish]

Sounds good! I did the same thing as in my diagram on a 75gal running 2 tunze streams (one @ 1600 gph and one @1850 gph). Then I had a magdrive for return through a sea swirl @ 950 gph. I didn't have any deadspots in the tank, but couldn't do that with sand. If I did, sand would be all over the place You can see the placement in the attachment below.

 

[ReefJeff]

should I lower some of the live rock down from the top? My rock goes to about 3 to 4 from the top of tank. Maybe its to high and not pushing enough water through the tank? My anemones have shrivelled up to nothing even with feeding and good T-5 lighting (36" 4-39 watts). My SPS are doing good though. But I feel like there may not be enough waterflow.

Thanks

 

[Krish]

Stacking your rocks that high is fine. You may just have to add more flow if you can't get the pumps you have now positioned properly enough. I've had tanks with more than 100x turnover rate like my 38 gal that had almost 4,000 gph of flow. I love tons of it and the tank inhabitants seemed like they liked it as well. Maybe a bit more wouldn't be so bad