🚨 Do not make this mistake‼️ Understand flow in a saltwater aquarium!

Flow is the most important parameter to dial in for your reef tank. Yet it’s also the most overlooked. Many reef aquarium hobbyists will add a few powerheads because they were told they needed them and never think about it again. You should be spending a significant amount of time dialing your flow to grow corals faster and have better coloration in your corals.
In this video we show you exactly how to dial in your powerheads in your reef aquarium to grow your corals faster, get better color in your corals, grow less algae in your aquarium, and improve your beneficial bacteria in your aquarium as well as remove detritus from your rock and sand.

[@maricel0602]

This was such helpful information! I just got a 100 gallon tank so now I have a guide to help! And I just bought 2 nero 7s!

[@bruhman8005]

Jake Adams had a talk at MACNA or aquashella where he talked about water flow. It’s an entire talk just about proper water flow AT the coral instead of in open water like so many of us do in our tanks. Great vid

[@user-nc7lw3lv8p]

I have been running a tank with limited success for about a year now. I Knew that flow was important but had never been given any way of knowing if something was high, medium or low flow, everyone just said it was critical to do right. Your turnover numbers has given me a great place to start. Everything in my tank has fluffed up and my polyp extension has greatly improved. Thank you.

[@tanknicians8839]

I’m so happy to hear that- thanks for sharing!

[@greenwoodexotics4386]

Thanks for sharing!

[@TRIGGERHAPPYREBEL]

Great video thank you for the help

[@MikeyColon]

Great tips! Keep them coming.

[@tanknicians8839]

Thanks!

[@justwho1]

great video 👍

[@tanknicians8839]

Thank you 👍

[@ROTTERtube]

Great video! I have a 6' long tank...125 gallons. I have the octoplus 4. It's only set to power level of one.....and still, I'm afraid it's too strong of a current for my torch. After seeing this video I'm sure it's fine, but I'm tempted to leave it turned off and just rely on the return power heads and only use the octoplus at night. not sure. thoughts anyone? thanks!

[@kimvermeiren79]

Great tip!! I have an aquarium of 1m80 (6feet). I’m running a maxspect gyre XF350 on it. I don’t like the flow because my sand is moving but al lot of deadspots. I did order the octo pulse 2+… i was thinking 6 octo pulse 2+ instead of 2 octo pulse 4 and 2 octo pulse 2. Bit in your video you do the combination with Nero? Can u get te same result with 6 octo pulse 2+? I wanna start over with the flow from zero.

[@dalecruz715]

Your forearms sold me on flow

[@Anton-42]

When u said nero I cheered 🍻 🎉

[@00HiGhGuY00]

Does this scale linearly? So for a large mixed reef/sps dominant tank, say 1,400 gallons (12'x4'x4') you'd recommend 140,000 GPH for total flow? It would most likely require closed loop circulation to achieve that. If you wanted to use a quality pump like Abyzz, even using their most powerful pump the A1200IPU, you'd need 11 of them to hit 140,000 GPH. They are about $6700 each, so that's a total of $73,700 in pumps. Is this how you'd go about providing flow in such a tank? Also, what about if you're using fine grain sand bed? With that type of flow, it seems like it'd be hard to not cause a perpetual sand storm.

[@ks1ngh27]

Great content. I subscribed. I have well established tank but my coral growth is slow because of flow. Especially Zoas don’t seem to like the tank. Any advice?

[@tanknicians8839]

Feel free to send us a video of the tank in an Instagram dm for more detailed advice. But going off of what you suggested I’d recommend adding more flow, preferably a diffuse flow from something like a Nero.

[@brianchang5099]

whenever i turn on my flow pump my goniporia in a 20 gallon cube closes up what can i do

[@tanknicians8839]

You could move the goni to a spot with less flow, move or direct the powerhead differently, or potentially you may want to uografe the powerhead to something more controllable. Feel free to send us a dm on Instagram with a video of the tank, preferably with some flake food floating around and I can give better advice.

[@sovereignviper90]

Goni's like turbulent flow, sounds like you run a more laminar flow, aka straight line flow. In my 65g I run two jebao slw 20's max flow set on else mode and one mp10 set to max flow on nutrient export setting. I have recovered hundreds of dying goni frags with this type of flow. Corals are like a nagging wife, just take your time to process the nag and adjust from there lol

[@bp7505]

Do you slow down or change the type of flow at night?

[@tanknicians8839]

In a high flow system it can be a good idea to make the fish more comfortable, but in the oceans flow doesn’t decrease at night and increase in the morning.

[@melodic_breezy]

Sorry but I’m gonna have to disagree with the numbers. In my Reefer 200xl if I used a high flow of your recommendation of 80x that would mean I would have to use 16,000 LPH pumps which would strip the flesh clean off my corals and push every grain of sand away from the bottom of my tank. Also with regards to the return pump Red Sea recommend a 2000 LPH which I doubled to 4000 and is more than enough to efficiently turnover all the water in my system more than 10 times an hour

[@tanknicians8839]

Hi, thanks for commenting! I don’t think we disagree I think the sticking point here is how we are defining turnover. You’re describing turn over through the filtration (which with marine sumps is optimized usually between 4-10 x water volume per hour. Red seas follow this rule. What we are discussing in the video is turnover throughout the display tank. Your tank may be better served with a smaller return pump and a diffuse powerhead like a Nero 👍