power heads

[luebkeb13]

I have a 125 gal. salt tank. right now it will be fish only. how many power heads should i put in there, and what should the flow rate, or gallons per hour be? what are some good power heads, and where can i get them?

[sir_dudeguy]

seio's would be the powerheads to get imo..or if you want, tunze. But imo, the more flow the better, even if its only a fish only tank for now. Specially if you see a possibility that you're gonna go reef eventually...that way you wont have to pay for the stuff later. But for a fish only, i'd say go for 15 times turnover rate per hour. People said 10...so i started there. It wasnt good enough...i still had dead spots, food making it to the bottom and just sitting there, etc...So i bumped it up to 25 times turnover and it was awsome. Corals loved it, never had stuff sitting on the bottom and my skimmer is pulling out more stuff too (thats one trick to a skimmer...the more flow around it you have, the higher the chance of a piece of...whatever, floats near enough the pump to get sucked in, thus increasing the chance that it will pull out more, and it did for me). No more dead spots, no more unsightly algae. But then one of my powerheads fell and got sand in it and got ruined :( so i'm down to like 19 times turnover now and i'm seeing some of those dead spots coming back and whatnot.

But anyways, if you wanna do minimal flow, (imo 15 times turnover) then that will be 1875 gallons per hour total from all your pumps added up (and dont just get it from one or 2...the more sources of flow, the better imo)

If you wanna go all out now, then 3125 gph total about.

[luebkeb13]

good lord!!!! thats a lotta hooch, thanks

[FavaBean]

If you are just gonna go with fish only I would say you would want about maybe twenty times turn over....I would try some tunze if you can afford it or seios if you cant afford tunze....I would look at either drs foster and smith or marinedepot...hope that helps

[sir_dudeguy]

haha thanks favabean :) another person like me lol. i also would rather do 20, but i was just saying 15 as the absolute minimum that i'd personally do. the more flow the better.

[sir_dudeguy]

oh, and it seems like a lot of flow, but once you get it all in there, you'll really enjoy it, specailly when you get corals. Fish will enoy it too once they get used to it.

[luebkeb13]

ok so i bought 2 seio 2600 power heads, hope this does the trick, thanks for the info...........with all this flow it's gonna be like hurrican katrina in my tank!!!!!

[sir_dudeguy]

wow, that'll be 41 times turnover ;) Thats not unheard of but it is pretty high. But there's a lot out there that use 40x turnover for sps tanks and i've even heard of 50x. If they werent seio's, i'd say put them on alternating timers...but seios arent meant to be turned on and off like other pumps can be so i wouldnt do that.

[luebkeb13]

so maybe i shoud downgrade a little to some 1100 or something, or a 2600 and an 1100?

[sir_dudeguy]

have you already purchased them? i'm guessing you did it online just now? If so, maybe see if you can cancel the order or switch one of them to the smaller one. imo 40 isnt too much, but for stuff like softies and lps (which are easier) it might be, specially if you got direct flow on them.

[luebkeb13]

ok, the guy let me switch on, saved 22 bucks......on my way to billionaire baby!! thanks

[namdrib2]

I use four Maxi-Jet 1200 connected to a WaveMaker Pro. I had two Seios but they are not compatible with a wavemaking device (they make a lot of noise when they start).