need help with flow in my 240 gallon

[aquaboy620]

well my tank no longer looks like my photoshoot that I posted a while back because my tank after 3 years crashed. it was partly because of lack of flow. I believe it was that and removing my 4" sand bed. now my tank is cycling again and I'm having a cyano problem. but not for long I hope. I am currently cooking my rock at the moment and will be done in th next few days. so as of right now I have 2 external pumps one is a gen-x pump which is 1100 something gallons an hour and a coralife 1270 pump which is 1270 GPH. both of the returns are now connected to sea swirls. and I have 2 koralia 4's for powerheads. I know this is nowhere near where i have to be with flow with the amount of rocks I have. trust me even with almost all the rocks out the sediment is staring me in the face like, "hey look at me." so here are my tanks dims. I have a 240 gallon acrylic tank that is 96"x24"x24". I have 2 overflows 1 in each corner of the tank. I have a 125 gallon sump/refugium. any suggestions would be appreciated. should I do a spray bar, more power heads what? thanks for your input. I really appreciate it.

 

[waynem]

Build a stand for the live rock so you can get better water flow around it.

 

[aquaboy620]

stand? more info if you can. like pvc. not sure what you mean. sorry.

 

[aquaboy620]

oh i just read your tank build. very nice. I see what you mean with the stand. and I already put the rocks in the tanks. but I have tonga branch, marshall island ans fiji live rock. I made my base of the rock work out of the bulky tonga branch rock and put the other rocks on top. everything is really sturdy and not much is touching the floor. flow so far is ok, but I decided to get 2 koralia 8's which would give me about 8500 gph on the tank with my returns in the tank. hopefully it will be enough. I like your deltec skimmer. I went euroreef rs250. it works ok but its the user(me) not the equipment that isn't making it work to it full potential. I can't get it right without it overflowing. so what did you decide to get as far as powerheads in your tank and how do you like the decision that you made? thanks for your input and really enjoyed your tank build thread.

 

[waynem]

2 x K8s should be a lot of flow, just have to watch for any dead spots. With the Tonga stuff as the base you should be fine hopefully.

You might want to adjust the input to the skimmer a bit lower then try to retune the output to stop it over flowing.

I went Tunze for the display side on the tank and 2 Koralias at the rear , down low behind the rocks work, one each side just pushing water around the rocks.

 

[aquaboy620]

ya as of rigt now I am running 2 k4's behind the rockwork, one on each end and 1 k8 in the front and getting a k7 as well for the opposite end for now. turns out its brown diatom algae. it's driving me crazy. but it looks like its getting better. I just started giving the tank light again.