cheers Andy, that does help.by positioning the outlets at different heights I hoped I wouldn't have the flow 'colide', it's worked to some extent but the dead spots are rather large.
Glad its helped. I have the added problem of the huge piece of bogwood in my tank, which further disrupts my flow, but even before this was the only way I could get things to work. You could miss the spray bars as they are ugly but I think it helps.
The current set-up means the outlet is pushing along the surface, it reaches the opposite corner at which point the flow is 'pulled' down by the wavemaker and pushed along the bottom to the opposite bottom corner (My CO2 bubbles actually hit the corner of the tank at the opposite side to the koralia). The inlets pull it up along with the dispersion of water by the spray bars / outlet.
This must work because all my plants have kept their lower leaves even with the bogwood slowing things considerably.
Any collision of flow is going to slow things down considerably. You are essentially wasting kinetic energy, with a planted tank you want to savour every bit you get.
I'm using a 1000lph and 1500lph external along with a 2600lph Koralia.
I struggled with this quite a bit, and found that no matter what I do the flow is always better when either :1: Have my inlet and outlet are on the same side of the tank or2: I have the spray bars evenly spaced on the back wall.The 2nd gave me the most uniform flow but it was ugly and all my fish stayed in the back because it was TOO good.I'm now using the 1st option.
I made a full length spraybar from a piece of pipe and tried it all the way along the back with an outlet in each end, it works a charm and is by far the best option for functionality but you will never see your fish and it looks horrible.
If I was you looking at your layout, I'd put both externals on the right (with or without spray bars, if without spaced evenly along the width) then the wave maker on the left. The reason for this is 1) your externals will be fairly hidden and 2) if you put your wave maker on the right I guarantee it would suck the plants in (mine loves to eat vallis)
are you able to put your outlets on the same side?
