Blowers making things worse??

Blowers Necessary???

Hey all-

I recently aquired a 72gallon reef tank and it is amazing. It has a U-tube filter setup and two fan blowers. I turned off one of the blowers because one of the anemones was getting totally rocked, and kept the other one on. After working on clearing some aiptasia out of the tank, I forgot to plug the blower back in and I noticed later on that day that all three of my anemones looked HUGE--and beautiful. Could the blowers be hurting them?? Are the two blowers even really necessary for optimal circulation?

 

Just to clarify--the anemones looked their best when BOTH blowers were off..

 

Some corals and anemones like it better without hard flow on them, and you'll see this evidenced by them looking a lot fuller and just plain healthier when powerheads are diverted, or shut off.

You just have to work at it to find the right balance of water movement and calm to accomodate your tank's inhabitants. Sometimes it takes moving the animal (not in the case of an anemone though--they will move on their own), and sometimes it takes messing with the orientation of powerheads.

 

My huge red bubble tip likes very low flow,it's attached to a side of a big rock,away from the flow.I've been very lucky,had it 2 yrs+ and it's never moved off it's rock.If you blast an anemone with to much flow,it will move.They move to were they like the light and flow.And heaven help any corals,in it's path.I don't want to think about what damage my acros would sustain

 

yeah...that already happened to mine haha. I had it in the front--and it looked absolutely gorgeous!! but the next morning I woke up and had a hard time finding it..it moved to the other side of the rock! i was so bummed. lol. I'll have to try moving around the blowers or just shutting them off altogether (though id rather not do that cuz i kno the circulation is important!)

 

If you have a FOWLR, powerheads are not critical. If you own corals, you must have water movement.

 

i do have one leather coral ...but when i turned off the blowers it got a LOT bigger and started getting little spikes out of some of its fingers. I assume that these are polyps! sooo is that him thriving or is that a bad sign?

 

just to clarify...by blowers you mean powerheads? right?

 

actually no...there is a powerhead on the pump, yes...that is always on but then i have two small fan blowers that came with the tank as well. they are on the tank by magnet

 

I would divert the flow, not turn them off. If you cut your circulation rate, you will find a huge problem in the future called cyanobacteria.