Day Vs Night water movement

Flow should be INCREASED at night. The strongest tides are during the night, thats part of why so many corals feed at night.

 

some interisting coments I personly have been turning them off, The tank is running fine but perhaphs I will Run the p/h 24/7 for the next few months to see if I have any noticable differences ( becides the power bill

 

I don't really see it doing much for saving money, a couple of 30W PH run for only half the time. My guess would be like $2

 

2bucks is 2bucks......just joking, as I was before

 

Mazilla stole my answer, teacher! But yes, most corals in the actual trillions of gallons ocean filter feed at night due to safety and tidal water flows and currents and what not.

If you have a FOWLR setup or something, it might be better to lesson the flow to help the fishies rest at bed time. If you have a reef, it might be better to increase flow to help the hungry children feed. No matter what, I WOULD NOT shut the flow completely off. Ever. Stagnant water is a no-no in all types of aquariums, unless you have a specific purpose for it (whatever the heck that would be...)

Personally I just leave everything the same. It doesn't really help anything, but it sure doesn't hurt either. If it ain't broke don't fix it.

 

By using the reefkeeper 2 system my tank goes into a night mode. While in this mode it just doubles the time that the powerheads are on for.

 

I beg to disagree. Wave action is increased by wind and thermal action- it is highest throughout the afternoon, and decreases at night. Don't confuse tidal height with current and flow, a full moon will create a flood tide, due to gravitational pull, but the daylight wave action will still create a greater surge.
I'm running two SCWD's and two Kortalias during lights on, and kill the larger koralia (3) at lights out.
Corals will tend to extend their feeder tenticles further in a lower current.
That, combined with the plankton that comes up from the deep water at night is why corals feed at night. Corals don't even open up in high currents.

 

You can beg all you want, it doesnt change the fact that you're wrong j/k
....well, not 100% wrong...but your're confused as to the difference between surface current and under water current and that corals do indeed open up in current, maybe not a pounding current(but who has that going on in their tank anyways?) Go dive at night, or for an easier lesson, leave your flow at it's highest and look at the polyps in your tank....still open?

Of course this only applies to corals that feed at night(which is the volume of them) and rely strongly on outside sources of food, there are plenty that feed during the day(mostly relying on photosynthetic properties).


Ocean Currents and the Distribution of Life

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2007-05/atj/index.php


Edit: It should be noted that in the home aquarium we do our best to replicate the ocean(even at our best we cant compete) but eventually our corals learn to eat when we feed them so they don't usually depict the behavior of a wild specimen for comparative purposes.Unless of course it's a freshly harvested piece, then we usually see some shock as it adjusts to it's new enviroment.

Personally I dont think it makes a lick of difference turning your flow up/down at night, I dont play with the flow in my big tank, but the small tank gets an extra PH turned on at lights out just because the tank looks better with low flow during the day. The extra flow at night also helps repel the algae that results during that low flow period.