Night flow

Does anybody decrease flow (significantly) at night? I have about 60x turnover during the day and I unplug one of my Hydor 425s at night, but am thinking of unplugging the 750, leaving a 425 and the return pump (200gph) only. Is that too low for night?

 

I leave mine as they are.

 

Does the ocean reduce flow at night? ;D

But seriously, what's the motivation for such? Electric bill won't show much.... Is this tank in your bedroom, and too loud?

 

I too, would leave the flow rates the same during day/night.

 

Technically, oceans do slow down but to put that on night and day wouldn't be an exact copy of ocean movement. The currents are constantly changing from day to day and different locations of the ocean. Imo these night sensors are there to try to mimic this but its not the same every night. I currently have a natural wave system on my 50 and I like the different currents it puts in. That one is constant flow. I'm looking at the wavemaster pro for my 55 just because I like the modes it offers and that has a night mode on it. Not sure if I will use that daily or not tho because like I said not every night is the same, but every other or every 3 days wud b nice to switch it up ;D

 

The ocean surface water calms down at night. So, certain shallow water reefs may be calmer at night, but not deep water reefs. That said, I am currently keeping a mixed reef and my Vortech pump is a bit much for some LPS corals, but I am finding they do look noticeably better in the day if I let them rest a bit at night. I only turn the pump down about 25% though.

 

currents change and so does direction , during day mine are all running (pumps powerheads etc) i do move the korilla's around evryfew days , at night i'll turn one off. my tanks at night are calm

 

If you live by the water you're familiar with the major reduction in surface activity. My guess is none of our tanks do a very good job of mimicking a deeper reef. My Hydor 1400 goes completely off at night and my MP20 cuts output by half. I really like the effect. My fish get a break, my corals respond to the changing conditions, and I get a large cloud of kicked up detritus when things start up again.

 

My Vortechs were on a Apex and I ran a calmer night mode. Variety is the spice of life. Nohing we do is going to copy nature, but we can try. The reasons I saw were that the fish needed to sleep. Respiration decreased, and corals fed at night. Actually they feed 24/7, but at night they would come out more.

corals have a certain flow rate they need for respirationand to bring them food... too slow and it is not enough, too fast and they can't capture food. So during the day, when lights are on and respiration is high higher flows are good, at night when all the scavengers come out and kick up food and I stirred up the sump slower flows help corals capture more food.

I have no idea if it was good or bad, but that was my reasoning. All my corals were out at night and all had good growth.... And just to add... I gave them 8 hours of total darkness too. Even though moon lights are not bright.... they still were too bright for my corals to come out. After going to total darkness my tank would come alive and growth took off.

 

Thanks for the input. I have yet to get a wavemaker (waiting to see the new Hydor coming out next month), but in theory I like making things a bit calmer, so I will definitely keep turning off one of the 425s at night. I have no corals to test the theory as I'm FOWLR for the time being.