How do y'all deal with having enough flow and preventing dead spots where detritus collects? I have a Gyre on one end and a vortech on the other. I also have a jebao wave maker in the corner on the same side as the gyre. Gyre is slightly above the halfway mark and towards the front on the right side. Jebao is on the back right side pointed across behind the rocks. The vortech is a little above halfway and in the back third of the left wall. I repositioned like this and turned up the power on everything today after a water change. I vacuumed out what I could get to but apparently there was a lot left up under the rocks because there was so much funk floating around in the water. It seems to have settled down now but there are still dead spots. I'm currently running a bare bottom setup so I really want all of the stuff to be blown up and sucked out , not to mention, I really don't need it raising my nitrates! So. What do you do to prevent dead spots? Add more power heads? Turn up the flow speeds? Vary speeds with pulsing and changing of direction? Alternating currents?
I have the gyre set to pulse for 60 seconds in each direction on 90% (was 30 seconds and 80%) during most of the day and slow it some during the night because the fish blow around while trying to rest. Night it is dropped to 70%. Vortech is on some random stuff. During most of the day it's set to pulse every 60 seconds with varying speeds. Starts ramping up in the morning and slows in the evening. Ramps up to "nutrient" for 30 minutes around midnight then does a couple different things over night. Can't remember exactly. Vortech has all of those programmable settings. Jebao is set to like speed 4-5 and just aimed down the back behind the rocks to try to keep flow.
I do about 2 hours of Nutrient Transport mode every morning to try to get stuff in the water column. I'm convinced with some aquascapes it's darn near impossible to get zero dead spots but if you play around with powerhead position and depth (should be no restrictions at all with a bare bottom) you should be able to get pretty close. With the BB you should be able to just siphon detritus out of the dead spots every so often.
Ok I might try upping the nutrient time. I remember you saying you liked that mode on another thread so I added it in there. So, if I have them closer to the bottom to keep things kicked up does that still give everything else enough flow because it goes back up and around? When I do my weekly water changes I suck out as much as I can but it seems a lot got trapped up under the rocks. I saw it all when I moved the jets around! I was actually amazed at how much I'd missed! I've noticed 2 spots still since changing it up. One is back left corner where the rock sort of faces towards the left corner and the other is front right sort of in a small valley around some corals on the floor. I may have to do some rearranging of the rocks and corals too to get it to work better.
Adjust flow first for coral and second for detritus. Are you saying there is a 60sec delay when it's set to pulse every 60sec?
Obviously I want there to be enough flow for the corals. That's why I'm trying to figure this out. I also want a clean tank and if the stuff is staying trapped under the rocks where I can't suck it out then it will just foul the water. And I don't know exactly how it works. It's the vortech "pulse" function and I have it set for 60 seconds. The gyre alternates between forward and "reverse" (which is more like "flood the area" than flow in another direction) for 60 seconds each way. So it's blowing across the tank on forward and down to kick up stuff off the bottom on reverse. The jebao is just on constant. I've been sort of using my hammers and frogspawn to show me the flow. If they are sitting there still I'm assuming there is not enough flow. But, if there is enough flow for the corals, should there be enough flow to keep all the crap stirred up too?
I love my poop spots, makes it easier to clean while changing water, just hit it with the hose and done. I run bare bottom tanks and when I crank the pumps up to eliminate the poop spots it tends to be a little much for the coral.
You would be shocked to see the detritus in my sump! I have found the forward reverse function to be pretty much worthless in my Gyre. It's a misnomer; imagine a compass orientation, it's really blowing East then North West. At least mine does. If your taking up tank real estate with a powerhead of any type it should be run on some sort of pulse. Constant linear flow likely promotes detritus build up where pulsing lifts. This of course is not perfect! The overall best I've had my corals look is with strong wave pulse motions. How you achieve this depends on tank size and pump size. Essentially you want your coral to sway back and forth one time every 2-4 seconds. This rhythmic motion will also suspend detritus because waves have a cumulative effect. I think the best way is to have one pump strong enough to create the wave. Other pumps should be set to different directions to intermittently disrupt the flow and further promote a detritus storm.
Thanks for that info! I'll see what I can come up with then! I think that's the info I was looking for!
Great post Mark. One of the things I like about the MP pumps is the ability to have ones on opposite ends pulse opposite each other. I have 4 on my tank and it does a great job of creating random flow. Random is important IMO because that's what happens in the ocean. If you dive a reef in the morning and again later in the day it will likely have current coming from a completely different direction. I think the very best at this type of back and forth flow was produced by the old Tunze Wave Box. They're kind of ugly and take up some space but they do a fantastic job of creating that surge effect you see on the reef.
Yeah. The tank came with the 1 vortech and 1 gyre and I already had the jebao wavemaker, so for now that is what I have to work with. I really like the wide path of water that the gyre pushes across the tank but I like the program settings the vortech comes with. I wish I had a second of either of them. Maybe once I get all of this extra fish crap unloaded I can get one. I just can't justify he expense at the moment.
Now that I have a Gyre, I wouldn't purchase another. I wish I had gone with another jebao RW 15. I think though in a shorter tank the Gyre is a monster and likely performs very well. There are no right or wrongs for moving water. Mostly observations and opinions.
It's a 4' tank in working with. The footprint is low and wide so that's why I'm leaning towards the gyre with its wide path. If I had 2, I know there are programs you can do to have them alternate flow. I'd have to research that more though.
