Hi. My first post! I am setting up a 56 gal tall tank. This is my first saltwater tank. I am looking for recommendations for Wavemakers. I was kind of leaning towards an icecap gyro? Any suggestions or recommendations? I don’t know if one icecap would be enough for my tank or not?
Powerhead/ Wavemaker recommendation
- Thread starter Mainereefer11
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ShadowReef
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Hi Mainerreefer11, what livestock are you looking to keep? This may help people with recommendations. If you're going to keep an SPS dominant tank your flow needs are going to he very different to LPS. Personally, I'm a huge fan of Vortech quiet drives and you can tune them to whatever your needs are, however they're expensive and you might not need to fork out as much cash depending on the livestock
Mainereefer11
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ShadowReef
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Lps wont like loads of flow so I would go with something cheaper than a vortech. I dont think you can really go wrong with a lot of pumps out there so I would go with whatever matches your budget. I've had a few Chinese knock offs that are a third of the price but have no warranty but I've not had an issue with one yet. That said, if you do, it will be a buy a replacement job rather than get a new part for it. I used a Jecob gyre which was pretty good and not very expensive. If you're getting a pair of clowns I'm gonna bet you end up with some form of anemone too, so make sure you get something with a level of protection for a wandering anemone that might get turned into sushi!
Scubasteve11
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Have to give props to Sicce and would recommend looking at their line of powerheads. You can spend anywhere from $200 to $30 and I believe they have the longest warranty out there.
Whatever brand you choose, plan on ~30-40x turnover from the power heads for a LPS tank. Don't include your return pump in this calculation - consider it to be "bonus" flow. 40x means you'd need something in the 2200gph range, and because you really should use multiple power heads to create more random flow, 2 or more smaller ones is usually better than one larger one.
In my SPS dominant 120, I use 2 x gyre 250's that max out at 60%, 2 x 1500gph koralias and another 2 x 850gph koralias for a total of ~90x turnover from in-tank pumps. I have the gyres on the back of the tank about 1/3 of the way down, the 1500gph koralias on the back in opposite corners angled up and towards the center, and the 2 850's on the sides in back near the bottom so that they can create flow behind the rockwork.
hth!
In my SPS dominant 120, I use 2 x gyre 250's that max out at 60%, 2 x 1500gph koralias and another 2 x 850gph koralias for a total of ~90x turnover from in-tank pumps. I have the gyres on the back of the tank about 1/3 of the way down, the 1500gph koralias on the back in opposite corners angled up and towards the center, and the 2 850's on the sides in back near the bottom so that they can create flow behind the rockwork.
hth!
