Water Circulation

I am starting a 40b reef tank and will be using live sand as my substrate. A friend who only has FOWLR tanks) told me I should use minimal circulation or else I will blow my sand all over the tank but I would enjoy having some LPS corals (particularly Tubastrea aurea) that need strong current. The plan right now, is to run two Marineland Maxi-jet 400 pro pumps, 1 in powerhead mode pointed at the surface of the water and the other in wavemaker mode. This will give me 660ghp of water movement. My question is where is best place to position the wavemaker in a shallow tank like a 40b so that it doesn't kick up a lot of sand? Also, should I be using less circulation like my friend suggested or do I have enough , or maybe I need more. This is my first SW tank so any advice/tips/comments are greatly appreciated.

~Scott

 

Place them on opposite sides of the tank aimed parallel to each other. FWIW I have 4700gph on my 75 gallon tank with sugar sized sand. My sand does get moved around to it is a little high. I would guess you could go to 50 times the volume flow without too much trouble. 20 to 30 times flow is a good rate for LPS.

 

What powerhead were you looking to get? Also, the fineness of the sand will play a lot into whether or not it gets picked up.

 

The sand I'm going to be using is Nature's Ocean brand white sand the grain size is listed as 0.1mm to 0.5mm. The power head I had picked out was a Marineland Maxi-jet 400 pro it does 110gph in powerhead mode or 500gph in wavemaker mode. After what 2in10 said about his tanks I might look into getting a Hydor Koralia 750; that would give me 860gph.

 

I would match the circulation pump sizes on each side of the tank. I also suggest using 4 instead of 2 pumps. So using 4 425 or 240 nanos would be the way I would suggest going depending on the type of corals you with to keep. LPS/softie tank slower, SPS dominant higher. I have the same type sand as you are thinking of getting. I would suggest getting something more in the 1mm range from my experience.

 

2in10, would you have all four pumps pointed at the water's surface or have them all pointed in differing directions?

 

If it were me, I'd have at least 1 pointed to the surface for gas exchange, 2 at each other to create turbulence and 1 extra pointed at a particularly low flow area so that detritus can not settle. A place like along the back wall of the tank behind your rock?

This is my own meandering opinion...I'd wait for someone more experienced to say whether or not this is optimal.

 

I'm towards the Koralia nano 240s. It strechs my budget a little more than I'd like but I'd rather spend the extra $100 then get 6 months down the line and end up regretting not getting them for my corals and anenomes. The entire build is still under $500 before livestock so that makes me happy.

 

I would set them so they all disturb the surface or one pair at minimum. I would put them about an inch or so below the surface to achieve this.

Pair them up and aim each pair parallel to each other to get a good random flow.

 

Thanks for all the great advice guys. This will go a long way towards helping me set up my reef tank