chineseknife
Premium Member
I'm having some internal strife here about what to do in my reef tank concerning flow and it's over abundance and/or inadequecy, and ultimately coral growth and happiness. I am aware that flow can affect a great many things from algae growth to some fishes special needs to good coral growth. While I am currently running 2 sieo1500's in the 55, I am considering going down to 1. Why?
Well, the way they have to be pointed with the current scaping and coral placement causes a depression in the front of tank in the sand bed. I thought an even sand bed allows for greater filtration and having higher spots hinders that. In conjunction with this, regarding ph pointing, they are blowing almost directly on some of my sps. I thought they liked high, INDIRECT flow? Which allows for a more upward growth pattern and keeps some corals from turning "knobby" from blunt force flow, right?
So my dillema is, remove one of the sieo's and reposition the other for optimal flow throughout the tank or keeping them both in, but dialing them both down to a lower flow rate and still get the cross current effect by pointing them at each other. I think the second option would defeat the purpose of having sieo's, which is their performance fully opened and full blast.
I know alot of the decisions I make concerning my tank usually ends up as an expirement, which I am willing to do. But the bottom line here is that I don't want to negatively effect things by lowering the amount and changing the direction of the flow, since they are already used to it, and then having to spend extra time reversing those effects to get things back to normal.
How do you end up at the final decision on issues that could greatly effect the health or demise of fish and corals?
Well, the way they have to be pointed with the current scaping and coral placement causes a depression in the front of tank in the sand bed. I thought an even sand bed allows for greater filtration and having higher spots hinders that. In conjunction with this, regarding ph pointing, they are blowing almost directly on some of my sps. I thought they liked high, INDIRECT flow? Which allows for a more upward growth pattern and keeps some corals from turning "knobby" from blunt force flow, right?
So my dillema is, remove one of the sieo's and reposition the other for optimal flow throughout the tank or keeping them both in, but dialing them both down to a lower flow rate and still get the cross current effect by pointing them at each other. I think the second option would defeat the purpose of having sieo's, which is their performance fully opened and full blast.
I know alot of the decisions I make concerning my tank usually ends up as an expirement, which I am willing to do. But the bottom line here is that I don't want to negatively effect things by lowering the amount and changing the direction of the flow, since they are already used to it, and then having to spend extra time reversing those effects to get things back to normal.
How do you end up at the final decision on issues that could greatly effect the health or demise of fish and corals?
