Water flow

How much water flow should I have for my 40 gal reef tank I have 960 gph now ( 2 SEIO prop's pushing 320gph a piece and 2 Penguine powerheads <old fashioned> not prop pushing 170gph a piece. OK or NOT OK

 

Should be. What is in the tank?

 

While I am definitely still in the newb bracket the 2 things I always read about flow if first and foremost dead spots and the biggest no no. Second as far as a general rule of thumb most people aim to achieve a plus/minus of 20-30x turn over.

 

20 x gallons is typically recommended, but I would recommend 25 - 30 x gallons. My tank has about a 30x flow rate, 2 koralia's pointed toward the surface, and 1 across the rocks.


It really all depends where you are placing powerheads, and what kind of tank you have. If you're running with fine sand, you should probably stick to the lower end of flow. If you have less than an inch of sand, you should have a higher flow rate.

 

I have Zoa's, toadstool leather corals, mushrooms, Flowerpot coral, green star polyps,and a couple tree corals (super tiny). One of my props are pointing at one colony of zoa's and their all opened up and look good. The other colony does not have a good flow by it and it opens but doesn't look as good. I'm thinking about upgrading to a Maxi-jet w/ the prop upgrade it pushes 1000gph for $22