Broad thoughts on flow

[Stanzo13]

I will soon be getting a wavemaker, but at the moment I have only one power head with flow only in one direction, so I run it like a gyre... That being said if I put a coral near the bottom 1/3 of my tank the flow will always be constant from one direction... It always seems to lean my softies over pretty bad, should I get that wavemaker asap, can constant flow from the same direction be hurtful?

 

[Stanzo13]

Side note, neither me or my corals seem to like one direction.

 

[xTJxSLIMx]

Me personally, I set up my tanks flow in a circular motion around my tank to keep detritus and excess food in motion to be collected by the overflow skimmer. That is most important to me. My wave makers are jebao ow-10's and I adjust flow to accommodate corals along with their placement within my abstract rock work of caves and ridges. Sps go on ridges of high flow, softies get put closer to cave entrances or between rocks in less flow. Hope this helps.

 

[Stanzo13]

I don't really have decent rocks or caves my tank seems to be either medium-high constant direction flow or almost none. I with their was a middle ground

 

[xTJxSLIMx]

As funny as it sounds, I started out the saltwater hobby when I was unemployed. My father in law got a 120g tank from a side job as partial payment. He knew nothing about it. He asked me for help and ended up giving me tons of extra stuff. I decided to take on the hobby to learn myself and help him out.

That being said I worked with what I had. I made my own skimmer out of two 2L soda cans and wood air stone, I used regular 1 speed pumps for flow. I learned that detritus builds in low flow areas, less rock touching the sand the better. One large pump creates sand storms. I ended up experimenting with applying different pvc reducers to the output of the pump reduced flow, even to the point of taking the pump output to my stovetop to mold it to a duck bill to reduce and further spread the flow until I was happy with the results.

Try different things out and experiment... safely...
I drew up a picture of my experience with one pump flow.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

Laminar flow is not generally considered ideal no. Often due to the dead spots it’ll make.

I’d look at this wp10. This is also the seller I buy from. Fast ship and also have replacement parts. When my head went out I bought a new one head only for about $30.

I’m a true gyre fan (the flow not the power head) and like raceway flow.
If you add a head of slightly smaller flow opposite the first you can create turbulent flow. So the water is turbulent but stays in the gyre. My gyre is directed to the overflow as I have a sump.
With the pulse mode , you can create surge flow. So it pushes back at the primary flow creating turbulence , and surge flow.

Three types of flow BTW , laminar , turbulent , and surge.

A lot of my coral actually get fairly laminar flow and do fine to amazing.
My clams are in a mainly laminar flow with some turbulence.

 

[PDR]

I was the happiest with my flow when I had 4 pumps that would turn on/off in 30-second intervals. I had them all slightly off sync so the flow was pretty random and it made the softies and LPS look great. There would be periods of low flow and high flow throughout the day as they synced up and fell back out of sync. I was not happy with the amount of flow my sps were getting so I had to change it up, but I still liked the way the tank looked the best with the previous setup.