Power head placement/flow questions

[Mitch0928]

Anyone have any tips for powerhead placement? I don’t know if there’s a sweet spot for select corals or not. on the right of the image is my euphylla garden consisting of frogspawn and hammer. On the left is my czoanthid garden and in the middle is my Dragon soul torch and my acropora. I’m not sure where I should place my powerhead as I have always been out of luck finding the sweet spot for it. I don’t want to much flow on my zoanthids but I need enough flow on my euphylla. Vice versa. If anyone has any tips or ideas I am willing to accept any help

 

[Idoc]

I'm terrible with flow!! Let's see if anyone else has some ideas! #reefsquad

 

[Ron Reefman]

Hi Mitch. I wouldn't worry too much about flow and placement of powerheads or wavemakers. IMHO, unless you are doing serious flow, like 50 turns of the tank per hour, flow is fairly easy for most corals to deal with. BTW, my 90g DT has a similar coral population to yours (60% zoas, 20% lps & 20% sps)

You always hear that zoas don't need high flow, and they don't. However, they deal with high flow quite well. The only coral in your tank that I think you need to be careful about in terms of flow is the torch. And it will tell you if it gets too much flow.

In general, I don't thing high or low flow is as important as some kind of randomized flow. Something like 2 or 3 wavemakers, working at random, which will keep things stirred up in the tank. After that, any medium flow rate is fine.

Do you already own the powerheads or wavemakers you intend to use?
Have you calculated the total flow (number of turns) if you ran them all at full speed?
I think if I were in your position, I'd be shooting for about 30 to 45 turns per hour.

BTW, I'm assuming you are familiar with how to calculate the number of turns in your tank. Return pump (gph) + powerheads (gph) divided by DT water volume (g) = turnover

Example: 1200gph + 500gph +300gph divided by 50g tank = 40 turns
I consider 40 turns to be at the high end of the medium range or the low end of the high range.

I hope that helps?

 

[Mitch0928]

Hi Mitch. I wouldn't worry too much about flow and placement of powerheads or wavemakers. IMHO, unless you are doing serious flow, like 50 turns of the tank per hour, flow is fairly easy for most corals to deal with. BTW, my 90g DT has a similar coral population to yours (60% zoas, 20% lps & 20% sps)

You always hear that zoas don't need high flow, and they don't. However, they deal with high flow quite well. The only coral in your tank that I think you need to be careful about in terms of flow is the torch. And it will tell you if it gets too much flow.

In general, I don't thing high or low flow is as important as some kind of randomized flow. Something like 2 or 3 wavemakers, working at random, which will keep things stirred up in the tank. After that, any medium flow rate is fine.

Do you already own the powerheads or wavemakers you intend to use?
Have you calculated the total flow (number of turns) if you ran them all at full speed?
I think if I were in your position, I'd be shooting for about 30 to 45 turns per hour.

BTW, I'm assuming you are familiar with how to calculate the number of turns in your tank. Return pump (gph) + powerheads (gph) divided by DT water volume (g) = turnover

Example: 1200gph + 500gph +300gph divided by 50g tank = 40 turns
I consider 40 turns to be at the high end of the medium range or the low end of the high range.

I hope that helps?

Beautiful tank and thank you so much for the response. So at the moment, I am using a hydor koralia 425. I do intend on upgrading to a Tunze 6040 which would unlock many new features. Unfortunately, I don’t know the gph on my return pump so i couldn’t tell you the turnover but i can tell you a few things: My torch is extremely happy with flow so i won’t be touching it anytime soon. My zoas actually get a decent amount of flow and they seem happy. However, my frogspawn and hammer are getting too much flow. They are not extended and puffy like they used to be before i moved my flow to cope with my new acros and sps. With my current power head, i find it nearly impossible to find a good spot to place it without it either killing my euphylia or not enough for my acros. Hopefully when i upgrade to the 6040, I will be able to add pulsing which will, in theory, work great with all my coral.