How much flow is too much flow???

[JCOLE]

Hello everyone!

I had a 75 in the past with 2 HOB Marineland Pengiun 350s. I recently got back into the hobby a couple months ago with a 55 gallon. I have the same setup with 2 HOB Pengiun 350s, a nano power head, and a HOB protein skimmer.

My question is I think I might have two much flow kicking around. It is not a tornado by any means and my coral aren't being blown around the place.

However, when I turned off everything to feed my anemone and elegance coral everything looked great. I left the powerheads off for 30 minutes and I have never seen the elegance coral so big before.

I turned on the left HOB penguin filter which is the other side from the elegance coral the coral stayed the same with small movement. Once I turned the other filter on the coral hit blown back and didn't look as big and full.

My question is could I just leave one on with great results on a 55 gallon. I love good water quality but I also love coral more...

 

[sbash]

Like many things in live, flow is about balance, especially in a mixed reef...

The corals need to expand more if there is less flow, simply because without the flow their food source is more sparse, so they need to reach further... That said, my elegance corals look great and get lowish light (their on my sandbed) and medium flow and I don't target feed them, so clearly they are getting enough to eat...

To answer your question, too much flow is when they can't open enough to feed. Way too much is when they get ripped apart by the flow (I've seen this with elegance corals when people move them around). So really, you need experiment with what you have. You might have too much, or you might just need to redirect what you have...