Flow for reefer 250

[theshaman]

Hi Reefcentral! I am planning on converting my tank to an sps dominant tank. Planning on using very little Rockwork so I can get that minimalist look.
For flow I'm thinking about putting a tunze 6105 on a sea sweep at one end of the tank. Do you think this will be enough flow for my tank?
Thanks!


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[dkeller_nc]

Probably not. The main issue isn't so much the total amount of flow, since this is a 3 foot tank, it's that it'll all come from one source. That tends to lead to areas in the tank with very high flow velocities, and other areas that are very low flow. Compounding this issue is that with only one powerhead, you don't have much opportunity for alternating flow, so one side of the corals tends to get blasted, while the other side atrophies.

That's why you typically see multiple powerheads in even fairly small tanks; they can be run at lower velocities and if they're controllable like the Tunzes, Vortechs, AI Neros, etc..., you can link them together to create alternating flow patterns.

To give you a specific example, my CadLights 50 gallon 2'x2'x2' square tank uses 4 EcoTech MP10s.