How do you determine strength of water flow/ lighting?

Hey Everyone,

I have been doing a ton of reading both before and after setting up my 24g aquapod, but there is still one thing that still confuses me.

In every article about caring for corals, they always seem to list the lighting and water flow requirements for the species, but they are always listed as low, moderate, and high, rather than by a quantifiable unit of measure. The problem I have is that those descriptions are relative and I can't get a sense of what equipment I would need to produce optimal conditions.

Based on my set-up of a 24g aquapod with two 65W Compact Fluorescents (one 25K and one Actinic) and the 290GPH stock pump, what would my lighting output/ water flow be considered?

Thanks,

Aaron

 

Oh boy, this can be confusing to a newbie. I know I was confused when I first started. This depends on what you want to keep in the tank. You probably could get away with one powerhead around 400 - 500 gph, and keep most corals. The pc lighting is outdated, and I believe is kinda low output in terms of PAR. But it should be fine for soft corals and most LPS corals.

Sent from my DROID3 using Tapatalk

 

Right now, I am looking at all softies- zoas, ricordea, leather, etc. Are you suggesting the wavemaker in addition to the stock pump? That would put me around 31x tank circulation/ hour, which just seems like a lot to me.

 

When you mean stock pump, you mean the pump for the filtration right? I like to ignore that mostly. That won't be enough flow on its own to keep detritus suspended. 31x really isn't a ton, maybe a bit much for all softies but not too much

Sent from my DROID3 using Tapatalk

 

I just bought a Maxijet 400 Pro, that I hooked up to my lighting timer. I also added 3 frags (pulsing xenia, blue zoas, and devil's armor zoas) and an emerald crab with it.

When I came down this morning, the lights and wavemaker came on and by the time I left for work (about a 1/2 hour later), the zoas were already starting to open. Hopefully, when I get home, everything will be happy and healthy.