How Much Flow Do You Use?

[Salty]

I'm Just Curious how much flow you salt water guys are putting in your tanks? right now I have a 750 gal/hour Power head and a return of about 700... I actually had to lower my flow because it was stressing out my corals and killed a few

I believe if you calculate it i have 26X flow and it is to my knowledge 20-30 for LPS 40-50 SPS

[gabor129]

Right now I have a 46 gal bow front! On that I have a 900 g/h return two Korallia 3 ( 850 each), and a Korallia nano (240 g/h)! However on my 10 gal nano I used to have, just my return was 800 g/h and I had two Korallia nanos (240 g/h ea.)in there! I know that was a bit of an overkill, but had all kinds of soft and hard corals just love it in there!

[Admin]

that's a lot of flow

[Salty]

HOLY CRAP gabor!!!! any LSP?? I had to lower mine cause my flow was so much my torch was literally ripping off the skeleton

[Launch]

In my cube my pump is 137gph (which i will be upgrading to 200gph pump. I also have a small pico evolution powerhead rated at 160gph. once i put the 200gph pump in I will most likely be removing the powerhead.

In my 30g I have a 400gph Emperor 400 filter and a 450gph hydor power head. The flow in this tank seems to be adequate.

[gabor129]

Salty - I have most of my flow behind the rock work so the fish waste does not accumulate, and yes I have some LPS such as 4 different torch coral, frogspawn, hammer, mostly the ones that like flow!

[Salty]

Care to frag any of those torch corals?

[gabor129]

LOL I can get you a smallish Ausie orange torch frag, that is the rarest coral I have! I did not see any around for a few years! I just lost two heads thought, that I hoped to grow out for frags.... I have to wait to see if this one survives! I think, I topped up with too cold water and the torch got a bit of it! The one frag is still alive but shows some white skeleton around one side! Let you know in a couple of weeks? Trade for some hairy shrooms?

[paoul]

I have a 1400gph return and 2x Hydor Koralia Evolution Powerhead (1500 GPH) and a wp60 which puts a nice 2" wave across my 220g so about 10000gph flow so 45x turnover

[crash29]

I have a 700gph return and 1 koralia 450 power head and 2 nano koralia power heads in my 50 gallon. I was thinking I was a bit light on flow and thinking of changing 1 of the nano's for a tune 550 or higher.

[crash29]

What is the calculation for flow. I am running a 50 gallon show tank (36"x18"x20") with a 30 gallon sump.

[Salty]

Gallons per hour (from power head and returns) / tank size (50 gallons)

Example...

450GPH return + 750 powerhead / 55 gallon tank = 21.8X flow... thats what Im running right now.

[crash29]

Thank you Salty. I am running about 32 times then from what I have been reading and hearing from different people I should be closer to 40 times if I can for lps and softies.

[Admin]

This is true, but remember it is all relative to your setup and tank. For example if I was to try to have 40x-50x turn over in my nano cube it would turn in to an unlivable tornado. My 24 gallon Nano Cube has about 30x turn for flow and anything more I think would be a disaster.

[gabor129]

@ Admin - Not true! I had my 10 gal nano @ 800X turnover with no ill effect! (I know that was nuts, but I like to experiment!) I had a spray bar desighned to spread the flow evenly in all corners of the tank. Took me 4 weeks to get it right, but it can be done! The water movement just has to be crossed to cancel each other out! You still filtering the water a lot and got some flow in the tank!