Turnover Help

[swordfish86]

Hey everybody,
I just have a quick question regarding the turnover in my tank.
My reef tank is about 1 year old now, and although my corals have always looked ok, i have always had a feeling they do not appear quite as nice as they do in the LFS when i get them home, just in terms of polyps extending, colour brightness ect. my water quality is perfect, and very crystal clear although i tend to always have a lot of little 'bits' floating in the water colom even though i run carbon every month.
I have been using a tunze stream and the filter outlet to give me approx 35 times tunover (i previosly had 25X).
Anyway, this morning i got up for work and i turned off my main powerhead to feed my sun coral, but today i was in a rush and forgot to switch the powerhead back on, leaving me just the filter outlet (giving only about 5-7 times turnover) i remembered this at work and came home a little early as to switch it back on, i was expecting all he corals to be closed up, but i was shocked, I have never seen my tank look so good, all the corals are funny extended and seem huge, also i have never seen them so brightly coloured! as well as this my water is crystal clear with no bits floating around at all!

My dilemma is now weather i should just leave it like this or not, i am quite happy to remove the tunze as i will have extra room and less equipment on show, but i was always told that you need at least 10X tunover 20X to be safe. I have mainly Lps corals and some softies (leathers mushrooms ect) and plan to start adding SpS corals now my tank is a year old, what do you guys think? The corals just look so great and my tank so clear it seems daft to use the tunze
any help would be great!

 

[fishlette]

Hey everybody,
I just have a quick question regarding the turnover in my tank.
My reef tank is about 1 year old now, and although my corals have always looked ok, i have always had a feeling they do not appear quite as nice as they do in the LFS when i get them home, just in terms of polyps extending, colour brightness ect. my water quality is perfect, and very crystal clear although i tend to always have a lot of little 'bits' floating in the water colom even though i run carbon every month.
I have been using a tunze stream and the filter outlet to give me approx 35 times tunover (i previosly had 25X).
Anyway, this morning i got up for work and i turned off my main powerhead to feed my sun coral, but today i was in a rush and forgot to switch the powerhead back on, leaving me just the filter outlet (giving only about 5-7 times turnover) i remembered this at work and came home a little early as to switch it back on, i was expecting all he corals to be closed up, but i was shocked, I have never seen my tank look so good, all the corals are funny extended and seem huge, also i have never seen them so brightly coloured! as well as this my water is crystal clear with no bits floating around at all!

My dilemma is now weather i should just leave it like this or not, i am quite happy to remove the tunze as i will have extra room and less equipment on show, but i was always told that you need at least 10X tunover 20X to be safe. I have mainly Lps corals and some softies (leathers mushrooms ect) and plan to start adding SpS corals now my tank is a year old, what do you guys think? The corals just look so great and my tank so clear it seems daft to use the tunze
any help would be great!

seems there was too much flow for them. why dont you try adding a smaller, more suitable sized powerhead for your extra filtration?

 

[shibby]

i think you should keep 35x turnover if your aiming to get the harder corals soon ! they neeed flow of 30-100x even depending on the coral of course, perhaps move the soft corals into areas of lower flow or protect them somehow with rock.

 

[superman]

What are your water parameters? salinity, pH, temp, alkalinity, Calcium, Magnesium, nitrate...

 

[SkiFletch]

what kinds of corals are we talking about here? In many cases, if a coral struggles to breathe it will extend its polyps larger to increase surface area to make it breathe better. Especially with LPS corals...

 

[andywg]

Polyp extension is not necessarily a sign of a happy coral.

 

[ReefKing]

Sounds like your power head was pointed at them some what. I would get the new Kolia PH's. They use the principal like a boat motor sort of. It doesnt produce one heavy stream but breaks it up to produce what the oceans current is like.