Flow Help

[kingPumpkin]

I have been pretty comfortable with most things with my new tank as that has been easy to research. Such as picking fish, cycling, rock scape, heater, water tests, etc. The big thing that i have no idea on is flow. I just had a cyano break and most people are telling me to adjust my flow. I don't know where to angle my powerhead and how high it should be. Any advice on how to see if it is too powerful, not powerful enough, is the flow reaching the whole tank, etc. I currenty have a 1350 pgh hyrdo koralia pump. 5.5W. I attahced pictures of what i used to have and that is when the cyano broke out so just today i switched the nozzel of the powerhead to be more directed and also lowered the position of it. Tips would be greatly appreciated for this lost newbie. Thanks! (disregard the cyano please )

 

[HuduVudu]

You want surface agitation. My opinion is from low to high. Push the water from the bottom of the tank to the top.

Also to help with the algae (of which there will be more) you need to increase your biodiversity. Quality cured live rock will make a huge difference. Get the live rock from online as the LFSs seem to not want to provide real live rock.

 

[R.Weller]

I recommend adding a second powerhead on the opposite side of the tank & point them at each other. Move them both to the top just below the point where they are not sucking air. It looks like you might not have an auto top method. If you don’t, this will give you an audio queue that you need to add RO. This helps keep salinity stable & creates surface agitation for gas exchange at the surface to help keep pH stable as well.

Looks like you’re off to a great start.

 

[kingPumpkin]

I recommend adding a second powerhead on the opposite side of the tank & point them at each other. Move them both to the top just below the point where they are not sucking air. It looks like you might not have an auto top method. If you don’t, this will give you an audio queue that you need to add RO. This helps keep salinity stable & creates surface agitation for gas exchange at the surface to help keep pH stable as well.

Looks like you’re off to a great start.

Thanks for the tip, Would you recommend a powerhead the same size or bigger/smaller?

 

[R.Weller]

Thanks for the tip, Would you recommend a powerhead the same size or bigger/smaller?

Really depends on your tank goals. With the livestock you have, I’d keep the same size. Without looking up that hydor directly, the ones I had starting out were AC & could not ramp up/down their velocity. It was on or off at 100%. For our model, Hydro made a wave maker controller to help them work together. This is preferred. We’ve since upgraded everything to DC pumps & wavemakers, but that’s all part of the learning process. We still use the old hydro for mixing kalk & as utility pumps.

I would also recommend a controller for your heater. We use InkBird. I have lost livestock because heaters have failed to turn on & failed to turn off. Now we use 4 undersized heaters with lots of redundancy.

We started in saltwater 4 years ago with a non-drilled 60 gallon converting from freshwater. Things have changed a lot in that time solving one challenge after another. As I mentioned, it’s all about learning. Keep up with water changes & keep asking questions.

 

[Uncle99]

What’s important in flow, is control ability, varying speed and patterns, one on each side, nothing much in your tank yet that I can see so if the sand sits, your not too much....