new member

Just an update to let you know how i am getting on and i was hoping for a little advice as well. Introduced the two clowns, firefish and shrimp to the new set up last night. Also some of the live rock with ricordea mushroom on. Ended up taking out the powerhead as apart from it blowing away sand from the base i noticed the clowns swimming with all their might just to stay still!!
I am considering putting a 3-4000ltr head in on the weekend to lower the flow by half (what do you think?) Also tried out my skimmer tonight and flooded the floor!! whats going on there?

 

The general rule of thumb is it is better to have more smaller powerheads, than one large one. For a reef tank, you want at 20-50X flow softies lower end, SPS high end). For you, this would be 4,000-10,000 ltr/hour. So I do think a couple smaller (maybe start with 3,000?) would be better and add if needed.

All skimmers can be adjusted to change how wet or dry the skim is. If the flow is too high it will cause a very wet skim, fill the collection cup and eventually overflow. You want to change the height of where the micro bubbles are to just above the neck of the skimmer. Make small changes and wait a day to see how it does before you adjust again. Which one do you have anyways?

 

Thanks for the reply, its a great help to me. The skimmer is a V2 Skim 500. The guy in my LFS has been really helpful but its still difficult when you actually get it home and start yourself. I have never had a skimmer before as only kept tropical. With this skimmer you need to prime it first by filling the unit with water (not sure how much though) so was trial and error really. When the unit did start though there was water pouring out from beneath the collection unit on top. Anyways turned it off now.