Water Flow

The ocean is a vast expanse of moving water. Corrals located in reef zones are for the most part subjected to very frequent random water movement. This provides the corrals with the benefit of having nutrition supplied to them and aiding in having undesirable material stripped from their surface. Algae film has a hard time building up on surfaces that are subjected to constant random water turbulence.

In the reef aquarium you should strive to have water movement upwards of 10x of the water volume in your tank. This can be a combination of outputs from powerheads, protein skimmers etc.

A standard setup can be multiple power heads pointed towards the aquarium glass to produce random turbulent water movement. There is another method which I have employed. I have a large pump located in the sump rated for 10x of the aquarium capacity (I am limited by my overflow which I will talk about in the future). This pump is the return line for the sump back into the aquarium. It is plumbed to a fix line at the top of the aquarium with multiple output ports which can be rotated occasional for random flow.

The moral of the story is to get as much random water flow as you can going in your aquarium. 20x is not an unreasonable number to aim for and your corrals and other inhabitants will thank you for it.