TinyChocobo
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- May 11, 2016
- Messages
- 708
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- What state or country do you live in
- Indiana
Hello!
I have a Red Sea Reefer XL 425 which is 47" x 22.6" x 22" and I have a pair of Vortech MP40 Pumps.
Right now I have them on the back wall on opposite sides of the tank as I'd really prefer to avoid having them sticking out on the ends/sides. I can do that if necessary - but would prefer not to.
Here is what their current placement looks like:
It looks to me like I am getting pretty good flow over the sand on the ends and in the corners as well as about 1/3 up the front - but that flow in the middle itself may be suffering a bit. I am only running them at about ~40% to keep from blowing all of the sand out of the front corners and could certainly turn them up. The sand is Pink Fiji but I have some Special Grade I can replace the Fiji with - which is a little bigger and doesn't blow quite as bad.
I considered moving the pumps more towards the end of the tank to see if I could get more of the flow to meet in the middle.
That said I do have the return from the sump in the middle but it's flow isn't super impressive. It's a VarioS-4 [ https://www.bulkreefsupply.com/varios-4-controllable-dc-pump-1050-gph-reef-octopus.html ] and I have it set one level below 'max' as 1-4 are labeled 'normal' - it's on 4 - but I can turn it up to 5.
At any rate I want to try and make sure there's nowhere that anything can really 'settle' on the sand - I'm trying to avoid dead spots. From what looks like diatoms on the sand in the front center it looks like that's an area of low flow to me [but it could just be due to the amount of light overlap in the middle?
Here are shots of the ends:
I have a Red Sea Reefer XL 425 which is 47" x 22.6" x 22" and I have a pair of Vortech MP40 Pumps.
Right now I have them on the back wall on opposite sides of the tank as I'd really prefer to avoid having them sticking out on the ends/sides. I can do that if necessary - but would prefer not to.
Here is what their current placement looks like:
It looks to me like I am getting pretty good flow over the sand on the ends and in the corners as well as about 1/3 up the front - but that flow in the middle itself may be suffering a bit. I am only running them at about ~40% to keep from blowing all of the sand out of the front corners and could certainly turn them up. The sand is Pink Fiji but I have some Special Grade I can replace the Fiji with - which is a little bigger and doesn't blow quite as bad.
I considered moving the pumps more towards the end of the tank to see if I could get more of the flow to meet in the middle.
That said I do have the return from the sump in the middle but it's flow isn't super impressive. It's a VarioS-4 [ https://www.bulkreefsupply.com/varios-4-controllable-dc-pump-1050-gph-reef-octopus.html ] and I have it set one level below 'max' as 1-4 are labeled 'normal' - it's on 4 - but I can turn it up to 5.
At any rate I want to try and make sure there's nowhere that anything can really 'settle' on the sand - I'm trying to avoid dead spots. From what looks like diatoms on the sand in the front center it looks like that's an area of low flow to me [but it could just be due to the amount of light overlap in the middle?
Here are shots of the ends:
I have the same one with a max gyre on one side but havent run into any dead spots yet but I did go with the Aragonite. I like the idea of mixing the sand up with a bigger grain but have you seen the splitter on 
.
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