I feel like flow has been my biggest issue

[reefinaroom]

I’ve been reefing for only a couple of years. Each year has me upgrading equipment and getting more optimal results, but flow seems to be my major issue.

My tank is 100 gallons (sold to me as 180) and it’s a second hand custom made tank. The overflow is in the back right of the tank and the return nozzle is on the far left pane of glass. I have two redsea reef waves on opposite sides of the tank and a Nero 5 midway down on the left side. I don’t get much movement with my corals and detritus and it’s bugging me. Here’s a picture below. Any help would be much appreciated.

 

[KrisReef]

Ad more pumps until you have a storm surge of movement and then back off if the fish can’t keep up ( be careful they can be swam to death!)

Flow is the lifeblood for the reef

 

[Reefering1]

2 more, on back wall, seem appropriate to me. I like to set them fairly high and on random mode. As long as fleshy corals aren't being pinned to one side, they're good.

 

[reefinaroom]

Ad more pumps until you have a storm surge of movement and then back off if the fish can’t keep up ( be careful they can be swam to death!)

Flow is the lifeblood for the reef

So I should crank up the flow of everything and then tone it down to a sweet spot?

 

[areefer01]

So I should crank up the flow of everything and then tone it down to a sweet spot?

I'm not sure I would crank it up to 113% but it does help if you can adjust while sitting in front of the display. I position the flow devices to what I think is best then pull up a chair that has the display visible and start making small adjustments. It helps having a flow vision in mind as to tweak things.

For example I have this vision of a ball of loose yarn in the middle of my display and I want one powerhead on one side pushing it towards the opposite side. A little bit each time slice until it reaches the other side. Once there I want it to be picked up and slowly pushed back to the other side. At some point I have a storm mode set that has a 1 second 100% intensity push that uses a .5 ms pulses. Evening time I slow things down dramatically but still alters flow but in a more random pattern.

I've found this method to work the best. For me anyway. Flow assessment never ends. In my opinion.

 

[bobnicaragua]

I’ve been reefing for only a couple of years. Each year has me upgrading equipment and getting more optimal results, but flow seems to be my major issue.

My tank is 100 gallons (sold to me as 180) and it’s a second hand custom made tank. The overflow is in the back right of the tank and the return nozzle is on the far left pane of glass. I have two redsea reef waves on opposite sides of the tank and a Nero 5 midway down on the left side. I don’t get much movement with my corals and detritus and it’s bugging me. Here’s a picture below. Any help would be much appreciated.

I would crank the flow with what you have before adding more power heads. I like to blast the top of the tank for a lot of surface agitation and run the lower power heads as high as I can get away with. (Too high and all the substrate blows away.)

 

[reefinaroom]

These are all great suggestions. I’m going to rework stuff tonight when I get home from work and hopefully report back with better news.