10 gallon saltwater tank

ogre929 · Apr 14, 2006

Scuba Oz said:
The Fission by Current USA is the only small nano type skimmer that has any good reviews and they are inexpensive. In a nano as well as any marine setup, skimming is by far the most important thing, but dont take away the power of a water change, and good flow. Gas exchange will happen with good flow by breaking the water surface by aiming power heads up or towards each other to create turbulant water. Dont be afraid to create flow because the tank is small, remember reguardless of tank size you want no dead spots and 20-30x's turnover an hour!

That's a lot of turnover. a lot! Dunno if i've heard of that much before. My surge would dump around 7 gallons in my tank in around 20 seconds. That's some pretty high flow. It blew absolutely everything around, but it 6 minutes of not a lot of water movement. But I guaruntee you there were NO dead spots.

cichlidman1888 · Apr 14, 2006

about water flow, i have my hang on whisper power filter on the left side of the tank , its flow is on full , On the right side of the tank i have a power head pointing down and to the center of the tank . the only movement on the top of the water is created from the whisper ,and it really isnt that much movement, is this ok or should i aim the power head up . if i do this wont i get dead spots in the tank??

Scuba Oz · Apr 15, 2006

You are breaking the surface with the whisper, but not a whole lot. One thing to do is put a rotater on your powerhead and it will rotate 360* or put the deflector in the up positition and lower the powerhead to where it is aiming up and it will break the water surface

Scuba Oz · Apr 15, 2006

Ogre,

I know that souds like a lot of turnover, but its not really. My smallest reeftank is a 37g tall. I have three Maxi Jet 1200's in there. They are rated at 295 gph which gives me 885 gph total which in turn breaks down to 24 times turnover rate an hour. And I could add another power head or two if I wanted and it would not disturb my sandbed.

ogre929 · Apr 16, 2006

That makes sense. I used to run two maxi 12's and a 9 in my 29 and it wasn't really that much flow. I could definately have done more. After the surge device though, I don't like the powerhead method. Too much direct flow and not enough volume is moved at one time. If you like experimenting, I highly reccomend it. My rose grew from 1 inch across to over 18 inches across in just a few months. I used to propogate them and it sat in front of the surge outlet into the tank.

Princley · Apr 16, 2006

fatsolomon said:
i couldnt agree more. get one, dont even think of not having one. just my advise...

yep agree.. get a skimmer sound to me live the film could also be die off from the live rock, if it starts to smell bed then thats what it is

Scuba Oz · Apr 16, 2006

ogre929 said:
That makes sense. I used to run two maxi 12's and a 9 in my 29 and it wasn't really that much flow. I could definately have done more. After the surge device though, I don't like the powerhead method. Too much direct flow and not enough volume is moved at one time. If you like experimenting, I highly reccomend it. My rose grew from 1 inch across to over 18 inches across in just a few months. I used to propogate them and it sat in front of the surge outlet into the tank.

Oh. dont get me wrong, a wavemaker of any kind is better than and dirrect flow out there!! Thats why all my tanks have a tunze or some sort of wave making device, the 37g tall is about a week away from a wavemaker, just waiting on it to arrive :grinno: