How much flow?

Jon Fishman · May 14, 2019

Doing a bare-bottom, so I am excited to be able to bump up the flow. I was planning on trying to get one end of the tank with much more flow than the other (doing smaller powerheads on one side and bigger on the other plus a couple on the back)

I want to keep some chalices etc. on the high flow side. Can these be directly blasted by current? As long as they are anchored and not tumbling across the tank of course.... is there such a thing as "too much" flow for SPS?

Thanks.

James M · May 14, 2019

Hard to tell what’s too much flow if we don’t know the size of your tank and how much your putting in

Tyler Bullock · May 14, 2019

Chalices do eat with a mucus net. With to much flow they will have a hard time eating. Unless you turn off all the flow for feeding.

Jon Fishman · May 14, 2019

So in short, powerheads aimed more or less directly at SPS is not a good idea.... How would I know if they're getting too much flow? Bleaching?

In any tank, what would "optimal" flow for SPS be? it's 96 x 16 x 16 and I have 2x Koralia 1500 gph 2x Koralia 2450 gph and 2x Vortec MP40 Should I get additional powerheads, or will I be o.k.? Should I just scrap the Koralia's and get 1 or 2 more MP40s? or MP60's? Maybe Gyres for the back-wall? It's a new build and I'd like to not have to reconfigure a lot after initial setup.

Tyler Bullock · May 14, 2019

Chalices are not SPS btw. They are LPS. I don't have any experience with that long of a tank. On my 4 foot tank, I have 2 x mp40's and a large jaebo pump at the bottom. It is quite turbulent in my tank atm.

Jon Fishman · May 14, 2019

Tyler Bullock said:
Chalices are not SPS btw. They are LPS. I don't have any experience with that long of a tank. On my 4 foot tank, I have 2 x mp40's and a large jaebo pump at the bottom. It is quite turbulent in my tank atm.

"at the bottom" you mean your return pump? or you have some other type of pump in the tank to cause surface exchange? yeah, I'm too new! I just figured the harder-stony types were "SPS" I guess I need to do some more research. My Digi's, Chalices, and zoa's all seem to do the best in my tank.... very noticeable growth on a tiny Montipora I got too. I have the worst time with duncans/frogspawns, and my hammer. I don't have those in any heavy flow, so I don't know what else to do......

Jon Fishman · May 14, 2019

Can you ID this red/green guy? It is doing great so far, “opens” and gets puffy during lights-on time. I am tempted to get more in different varieties

Tyler Bullock · May 14, 2019

Jon Fishman said:
"at the bottom" you mean your return pump?

I have a Jaebo wavemaker sitting that the back bottom of my tank to get all the nasty stuff out from the back.

The green/red coal looks like some kind of micromussa (I'm not very good at identifying LOL). A LPS coral. Your Chalice does look very good!

Vahanyos · May 14, 2019

You can put one power head on each side of the tank to start... and the side you want more flow on you can add a power head on the back glass blowing towards the front glass of the tank... I feel that will keep the flow high and more turbulent on that corner than the other.

As far as how much flow you need... that’s a hard question to answer really. I have a sps dominant system, and only 1 mp10 on reefcrest, and a jebao rw4 on gyre, and my return. My gph I would say is a range of 400-2500 gph... but because of how they’re positioned they provide turbulent flow in the area where my sps are. I didn’t really chase a specific number, but instead just played around with the positioning until I got the flow right. I payed attention to the polyps on the sps and how they were swaying, making sure they are always swaying and getting flow without putting any direct flow on it of course. And by direct I mean don’t position a power head inches away from an sps where the stream is directly hitting it.