flow question

[mtnstreesndogs4me]

Morning,
I was surfing the forums looking for info on the various corals we have put in recently.
The are all doing fine for the most part. We just picked up a frogspawn and have a birds nest, hammer, flower pot, trumpet, open brain and a bunch of zoas and they all look great.
As I was reading through the forums I was talking to my wife about some of the recommendations and she looked at me and said "so what does low flow really mean"?.
We laughed and I started searching for a thread that talked about flow.
I think we are lucky and just hit on good flow in our tank but it seemed to be a valid question.
Does anyone have a good way to explain what the types of flow mean?
To us we look at low flow meaning a little movement but not much.
Just thought I'd ask in case any other newbie wondered also.
Thanks,
Robert

 

[MitchReef]

random water movement around in the tank, similar to the wave and underlying currents found in reef zones...the flow allows waste products to be removed from the corals and delivers micro-nutrients for them to filter feed....it also disperses waste and detritus so it can be trapped and or broken down in your biofiltration....Flow through the tank is provided by your return pump, but the majority of flow in the tank should be from powerheads (and I use the term loosely, for any in tank flow device)

That's about the best description I can come up with...

 

[mariobrothersleeve]

Low flow. They are talking about not extensive water movement for the corals to open up. Ie open brain coral, wants low to medium and you will see them become "tight" with high flow. If they are subjected to high flow for long times, they will die. I hope that helps

 

[mtnstreesndogs4me]

I was thinking of descriptions of low flow,moderate flow and high flow.
Maybe a description of what it looks like so new people have an idea of what they are looking for when they place corals. We have just been doing trial and error and finding the spots they seem happiest. I just thought a brief description of the different flow zones might be helpful when someone initially places a coral.
Thanks for the description though.

 

[mariobrothersleeve]

Good to go. Keep that open brain on the substrate.. they are very trippy to stare at with the metallic colors they give off. Good luck and give them a couple days in a spot to get comfortable.

 

[kbuser92]

Low flow would be 10-20x turnover (so for 10 gallons, say, a 100-200 gph circulation pump), medium would be 20-30x turnover and high flow would be 30-40x+. As for corals, they would want slow for softies, moderate for lps and high for sps. Thats generally speaking though, and pump placement is very important and can change those generalizations.

 

[mtnstreesndogs4me]

Thanks,
We basically tried to figure out the best place based on what the recommendations were and then watched how they reacted. We are apparently very lucky and haven't lost anything yet. I have read of corals being lost withing a few days and it made me realize that it wasn't as easy as I thought.
I look at it as low flow give a little movement to the coral (if it has parts that can wave lol) but change the direction of the tentacles? a little, medium flow has more of the wave movement on the coral and changes the direction a more but not all the tentacles are pushed the same direction, high flow seems to push all the tentacles in the same direction and doesn't allow them to really wave back into the flow. This is just my observations and I am a total newbie. Maybe it will help someone else that is just starting out and maybe not.
It is a great hobby though and definitely addictive and has absorbed all my spare cash.

 

[kbuser92]

Well, I would say thats a starting point to get them in a general area. You might need to watch them for a few days, even a couple weeks, sometimes to see if theyre happy.