Best powerhead location in corner cube?

[Gho5t]

Hi all... I'm looking for some powerhead placement suggestions on a 80G cube that is placed in a corner..

I have a 30x30x24 ~80G cube tank that is positioned in the corner of a room. Two of the sides are against the corner walls and the overflow is in the corner at a 45. I've been having a lot of trouble with powerhead placement since there aren't two opposing sides available. I have tried all different types of pumps and have reached the best combo I've found yet, but still struggling with too much flow in the areas I want low flow, and low flow where I want it high. The goal is a mixed reef tank... SPS dominant.

Starting in Feb I've been running 2 Gyre XF330s mounted 2" below the surface of the water on the left and right back walls. The problem with this is since they are at 90 degrees to each other they mostly just both push all the water to the front corner of the tank. The other issue with the cube is I found that with the Gyres I get great flow across the top, down the glass, and the bottom of the tank gets blasted with the flow running down the front of the glass, but around the center of the tank and the rock work, the flow is almost dead, like the eye of a hurricane.

I love the gyre's but I really wanted to get more flow around the SPS on the rock work so I added 2 Netptune WAVs. My original thinking was to put them on either side of the overflow pointing to the middle of the tank to create a random disturbance. That just proved to blast the front corner of the tank even more so I moved them to the left and right corners facing each other and pointed slightly up. This seems ok but the top of the rock around the SPS still seems pretty low flow.. for SPS.

If I was bare bottom and wasn't going mixed I could just blast the front of the tank and call it a day, but I'm having a really hard time finding a balance of good flow over the corals without blasting the front corner.

Does anyone have any suggestions for power head placement in a corner tank?

Here's a pic of what's currently going on... the pic was taken before I put the WAVs in the tank.

 

[lapin]

My solution was to place a return in the center of the tank and use a sea swirl with a 45 elbow so it points sort of down. If you dont have a top then this will not work for you

 

[Gho5t]

My solution was to place a return in the center of the tank and use a sea swirl with a 45 elbow so it points sort of down. If you dont have a top then this will not work for you

that‘s a great suggestion... but unfortunately no top on this tank.

 

[Dcal]

How about moving the gyre vertical in one of the corners?

 

[Gho5t]

How about moving the gyre vertical in one of the corners?

I’ve thought about that. Haven’t tried it yet because I thought it might just contribute more to the “eye of the storm” effect. It’s definitely worth a shot. Have you run a Gyre vertical? I haven’t done too much research on what kind of flow that would create.

 

[Dcal]

I’ve thought about that. Haven’t tried it yet because I thought it might just contribute more to the “eye of the storm” effect. It’s definitely worth a shot. Have you run a Gyre vertical? I haven’t done too much research on what kind of flow that would create.

i have mine vertical and still working on dialing in the speed. it creates kinda a race track flow all the way around the perimeter in my 90

 

[Gho5t]

Just an update on this... after trying several different areas with multiple settings I ended up putting the two Wav's shooting across the front of the overflow directly at each other in Inverse mode. This created the highest amount of flow around the center and top of the tank without blasting the front corner... Mixed with the gyre this seems to be the best layout I've found so far. I also have the Wav's running at their minimum between 1%-5% and the gyres range from 50% - 100% over the corse of the day shifting the flow from left to right.

 

[Jon's Reef]

Putting them both vertically along the overflow seems like a good option. If you vary the power of each through the day it will change the intersection point.
Another thing to try would be swapping one of the blades/ cages on each (one has 2 A and one has 2 B). Then you tube it from -100 to 100 and each side pushes a different direction.