flow for my tank...

while reading a post about having to much flow or to little flow, i discovered something important... i have no major flow in my 150!!

so i have decided that my next trip to the lfs ill buy a power-head to add some flow. but what i came across before was this.

everytime i added this powerheads, my fish seemed to get into the flow and get blown away... ( now i think my clowns did that for fun, because they would just keep getting into it and swim against the current)
but my guess this could be dangerous? so how can i do it so that the flow wont be "blowing" away my fish

 

..........

 

let it blow them away. If they are doing that it is indeed because they are having fun. My clown tang loves to jump right in front of 1500gph just to see where it ends up. Believe me they are used to much much more in the ocean.

 

alright..

 

The newer propeller type powerheads like Koralias, Seios, Tunzes, Vortecs etc have a much different flow pattern than the old MaxiJets or Penguins. They move massive amounts of water with very minimal power consumption and in a nice wide dispersed flow while to old styles are more like a concentrated jet stream. The older style also are limited to more like 300 GPH while the newer ones are in the 1200 GPH and higher ranges for about 1/3 the power consumption.
All my fish love the flow.

You can also modify the MJ powerheads into prop pumps but I have tried two different brands of kits and also some DIY and have not been happy with any of them. Vibration and restart issues on all of them.

I think for the price a couple Koralia 4's would do you good. They come with magnet mounts and swivel so you could put one in each back corner and experiment with flows.

 

+1 on above
with an add on - the Seio prop range I have just purchased 1 x 3800 litres per hour ( 950 gallons per hour)
its a nice unit, the bracket mount and magnet kit are excellent IMO

But it does not offer the spread of flow that I achieved with Sum Sum models (Korallia clones) its not as directional as the old maxijets etc as mentioned above, but its not as wide spread as Korallia would be IMO (Never used the originals just the copies so this is an assumption on my part)

I can and did use a 5000 LPH (1250 gph) K clone in the same position as I have the Sieo now, and the leather finger coral I have was less buffeted by the 5000 lph than it is now with the 3800 lph

so to sum up - if you want a more even spread the Korallias would be better than the Seio IME

Steve

ps - The only reason I went for the change is simply that the K clones here do not come with magnet mount option and I had a incident with 3 x suckers coming lose and converting my SSB into part bare bottom, part DSB and part SSB