Help with power heads & sand movement?

Okay....I feel really silly asking this question. We have a 90 gal tank & our return flow is powered by a rio hyperflow 17h. We have adjusted the direction of the nozzles numerous times, but no matter where we point them, they are moving our sand. We have sand dunes & fine sand particles moving in the water - which makes the water look cloudy.

We just added a koralia 3 & a koralia 4 today. I've spent the better half of this afternoon trying to adjust them as well with not much success.

What am I doing wrong?

Suggestions appreciated!

julie

 

Just use the Korillas....3 and a 4 is alot of movement.
I use a nano korilla and a korilla 3 as well as a maxi-jet 900...and then there is the flow from the fluval 405...as well as the flow from the Rio 2100 in my return sump....so..If I direct my fluval to the glass it will move sand...but its at a slight angle, so its all good..In short I have allot of current, but it works well around and thru the rocks...no sand movement. I'd say the 1700 rio is a bunch for inside the tank...but it is 90 gallon?
How much rock you got? that has an impact also.
My 2 cents.
LG

 

What you most likely did wrong was to use sugar sand It will settle in and the stuff not heavy enough to settle out on the bottom will be filtered out as it settles in the sump and dead areas . Its a normal thing and common problem . Just takes time sand will stir up on a real reef also .. atleast you have decent water movement thats more important then crystal clear water. Or you can remove the sand and replace it with a larger grain like custom seaflor or get a diatom filter to pull out the finer stuff from the water..

 

Post a pic of the tank, o.k.?

 

Lillys Granddad -
Thanks for your input - I'll continue trying to get the adjustment right. We have about 110 pounds of live rock & are getting about 30 more pounds this weekend.

Tangster -
Appreciate your advice. We just set up the tank 2 1/2 weeks ago - so a diatom filter may be the way to go (not ready to replace the sand yet).

 

Yeah i would just think you used very fine sand. Have any pics of the tank???;D

 

I'm trying to figure out how to upload the photos -

 

I think it in the FAQ section.

 

I was unable to upload my photos - something about the files being too large.

I'll keep trying, though.

 

I get the same thing too. I actually get tornado like swirls in my tank. What I see (at least in my case) is that cross flow will cause stirring in the water, just like a high and low pressure meeting in the atmosphere. Water will get redirected in your tank when it hits another waterflow, rock, or anything else in the tank. The only way you would completely eliminate your sand from being stirred is to remove anything that may redirect the waterflow down towards the sand after it leaves the head, or lower the flow rate and raise the direction of the flow. Once your sand seeds and grows more bacteria, it will tend to stay put easier, though some will still get kicked up. You can also add a layer of coarser grain sand to help it from being kicked up. I use oolitic since I kept stingrays, so this was something I always dealt with. As Tangster said, the cloudy water due to the sand being kicked up isn't as important as having proper waterflow. I added an Eheim canister to pull the dust out of the water, which works pretty well.