Powerheads

What is the best powerhead size for a 46 ga Bow Front Tank?

I want to keep fish and corals in it. Right now I just have 30 pounds of live dry rock and a clownfish with my hydor coralia power head of 1150, but I'm starting to believe that maybe it is too strong for my tank and I also found dead one of my clownfish yesterday and it was the most active of the pair.

Just a few minutes ago I decided to turn off the power head to see is the fish that it's left start swimming around because it was in a corner at the bottom of my tank, but he hasn't been to active since day one. But, it started to swim. I'm in the movie theater, but I will check where it is when I come back home and let you know.

Thanks in advance for the answers to this post.

Ok well you're definitely low on Live rock- you should have at least 50#. I doubt your clown died because of flow unless its like a vortex in there. I would recommend a couple smaller powerheads over one large one. One reason is you get less dead spots. Second being if a powerhead dies when you are out or at work, it only takes a couple hours of no movement to kill an entire tank.

Post all of your levels and parameters for a better answer

2XAl said:

Ok well you're definitely low on Live rock- you should have at least 50#. I doubt your clown died because of flow unless its like a vortex in there. I would recommend a couple smaller powerheads over one large one. One reason is you get less dead spots. Second being if a powerhead dies when you are out or at work, it only takes a couple hours of no movement to kill an entire tank.

Post all of your levels and parameters for a better answer

Click to expand...

My parameters are the following:

PH between 7.4 and 7.8
Ammonia 0
Nitrities 0
Nitrates 0
Phosphates 0
Calcium 500 but I don't believe this one is accurate, because if my calcium is 500 why my PH is so low.

I own an API test that I've been using for more than a month.

I bought 30 pounds of pukani rock from BRS and I cured the rock for a month before adding it to my tank. I wait until the readings were all 0. I did not follow the rule that says 1 pound of rock for every gallon because for me it would be too much rock for my tank.

My filter is an Emperor 400 with activated carbon that is cleaning my water pretty well. I'm feeding the fish only 1 or 2 times per day, because I have a bloom of brown algae that apparently is starting to die off. I do not have a CUC yet.

I have been testing the tank almost every day and the readings have been good. I added the fish a week after I started the cycle process and someone told me that my bio load was to low and that is why I have the diatoms problem. The fish were both 1 1/2" now I only have one left.

That's all I can say about my tank.

I will follow your advice and buy two small powerheads maybe 425 gph each to use instead of the 1150 that I using right now.

Thanks for your answer .

Did you wait until you were reading zeros before you added your livestock?

The "one to two pounds per gallon" rule exists for a reason. Your tank will not be able to keep up with your bioload (unless you plan on having only two fish) if you don't add more rock.

Unless you have corals (and by corals I mean a lot of SPS corals) the calcium shouldn't matter.

Your pH is low. Read up on buffers. You're probably going to have to start dosing.

Sounds like you added them too early and the one did not live through cycling. Very sad. You can cycle with a piece of raw table shrimp rather than putting fish through that. Unfortunately a lot of beginners do not know this and follow someones advice not knowing any better. So now you know.
50 lbs of rock would not be too much. In fact you would be best at about 75 lbs. of rock. Some people that do not want that much rock in the display just put it in the sump or refugium of some kind. If you don't have enough live rock, your tank will not be able to process as much waste and you will need to do more water changes to keep nitrates low.
There is no such thing as too low of a bioload. Do not listen to that person for advice. Is he the one who told you to cycle with live fish as well? Diatoms are a natural part of a new tank and will burn themselves out with proper water quality and using RO/DI water for top offs and water changes.
Your calcium has nothing to do with your pH. It is normal for tanks that do not dose anything to run at 7.9pH without issue. Alkalinity has more of a direct relationship to pH. What is your alkalinity? Don't worry about your calcium level until you start keeping corals.
Are you running a skimmer of any kind? You will definitely want to. I would remove the canister filter from the system. If it isn't cleaned THOROUGHLY once a week, it will hold debris in it which will break down into nitrates. Hang on to it in case you need to run carbon for something specific, but it's unnecessary to keep it on your system full time and can cause you issues down the road.
Hope this helps and good luck.

Chichi nailed it

ErinCahir said:

Did you wait until you were reading zeros before you added your livestock?

The "one to two pounds per gallon" rule exists for a reason. Your tank will not be able to keep up with your bioload (unless you plan on having only two fish) if you don't add more rock.

Unless you have corals (and by corals I mean a lot of SPS corals) the calcium shouldn't matter.

Your pH is low. Read up on buffers. You're probably going to have to start dosing.

Click to expand...

I did not use the fish for the cycle. I added them when the readings were 0.