Importance of Flow in
a Planted tank
Let’s imagine this, you spend months researching your new
planted tank, and after all that hard work it’s time to set up your system.
You got a good light unit, co2 system, substrate and
hardscape and all the necessary equipment to setup your new successful
aquascape.
On the day the plants arrive you can barely contain your
excitement, finally you are gonna get a nice planted tank for your living room,
just like the ones you spent months idolizing on forums and youtube.
On the big day you wake up early, a friend comes over to
help you position all those heavy rocks you bought, and to help empty all those
packs of beers you got extra just for today.
The wife, having been warned ahead decides to take the kids
out of the house not to spoil your big day.
We’ve all been there, myself included.
So after a full day of hard work, your new pride and joy is
ready.
You sit back and enjoy your creation, it looks perfect,
everything is has you dreamed of.
Now you just have to sit back and wait for the plants to
fill in, but nothing can go wrong now, after all you did your homework and
predicted everything to the minimum detail.
Or did you?
After two weeks you come home after work, and while going to
the kitchen for a snack, you take a glimpse at your pride and joy, it still’s
looks beautiful, but something seems to be off.
You quickly grab a sandwich, a can of beer, and run to the
tank. Hoping your eyes were fooling you.
But they are not, your once beautiful aquascape is not
looking so beautiful, plants are covered in algae.
“Algae?” you think. “How can this be? I did everything
right”.
“I can’t have algae”. You reply to yourself outraged like if
the world is conspiring against you.
And what type of algae is that?
You don’t even know, after all you prepared so well that you
thought that you’d never have to worry about algae, all those hobbyists crying
online where just too lazy to do their homework or too cheap to get a proper
system.
At first you’ll blame the light, either too much or not
enough, you’ll start setting and resetting your system constantly, possibly if
not surely making matters even worse.
Now you are getting desperate and if it’s not the light it
has to be your nutrient dosing, “ I must be dosing too much”, there you go you
stop dosing nutrients and increase your water changes hoping this will solve
your problem.
And when your plants start showing poor health you will
probably think it’s after all a lack of nutrients and just drop the entire
flask inside the tank.
And all this time those small strands of algae have turned
into a carpet, covering all your plants and rocks.
You up your co2 to the point your fish are swimming around
carrying oxygen tanks.
You’ve got light, nutrients and more than enough co2, still
algae is growing rampant.
Now here’s where it gets tricky, just having those things in
the tank is not enough.
Are you sure your plants are getting them?
“Of course I am sure”
Check again, there’s a small variable that you might be
ignoring, actually everybody seems to do it.
And that is water flow.
Flow is probably the most important thing in the planted
tank, all right I know the same is said about light, co2 and nutrients. And
these ones are really important, but the problem is that without good flow
having them is useless.
Without proper flow in the tank all the co2 and nutrients
are just not getting to where they are most needed, and that is, your plants.
And this can result in all kinds of problems, unhealthy
plants, stunted growth and of course algae.
This is even worse in aquascaping, because we all like to do
our super complex hardscapes and these rocks act only as one thing in the tank,
flow breakers. Ultimately they help break the flow and create dead spots in the
tank.
Never underestimate flow in your planted tank, always setup
your tank to have at least a 10X filter turn over, not only this improves
filtration but will also provide that much needed flow.
There is no over filtration here, what you really need is
the flow and we all know how these filters lose capacity once filled with
media.
If you have a very long tank or a scape with lots of dead
spots I suggest you go with two weaker filters, but that both will provide that
same 10X turnover.
If you can’t afford another filter you can always add some
powerheads, even though they are more common in salted water, they will provide
much need help in increasing flow to your tank.
When it comes to setup your flow it should be setup so that
it flows in only one direction, e.g
front to back or left to right, putting the output of your filter on the
opposite side of the input is a good idea.
If you add powerheads place them facing the same direction
of your filter output.
Spraybars can help greatly in getting that extra flow
efficiency.
Avoid conflicting flow sources, like powerheads facing
filter outputs. That will not help at all.
If you use carpets having a powerhead point towards it might
be a good idea, and in some cases mandatory to keep it looking good.
Having flow just for the sake of it, is not good enough, it
needs to be efficient and most of all it needs to get water, nutrients and co2
everywhere in your tank.
Now that we discussed flow and its importance I hope you can
go back to your tank and make it look great once more.
Here's the video discussing flow.
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