Flow around heavily hardscaped tanks

[Henry]

Hi guys,

Just wondering how you manage to get good flow around tanks with a large amount of hardscape? I'm currently working on a 'scape with a lot of wood and banked substrate and I'm concerned with getting water around it effectively.

Here's what I'm working with:





To get flow to the stems behind the wood on the right, I'll need to have the outlet directed round the back of it. Won't this prevent decent flow to the plants in front? How do others overcome this sort of thing? I hope I'm not being too neurotic, I'm just wanting to cover all bases.

Fankoo.

 

[nickmcmechan]

I'm no expert but I'm thinking a spray bar spanning the left hand side of the tank, perhaps coupled with a power head beside it at the back

 

[James O]

A spraybar along the back will cause quite a lot of lift in the water below the jets so the area behind will have some movement. If it's not enough then a powerhead on the lhs firing behind will help.

To be honest tank looks small enough for just the spraybar to work unless it's unbelievably heavily planted

 

[clonitza]

A lilypipe on the right should do. Maybe move the whole thing a couple of inches slightly to the left so the rightmost rock doesn't touch the glass and blocks the flow.

 

[James O]

How big is the tank?

 

[Rıza Sırman]

Very nice hardscape. I loved it. I think you'll need a wave pump on the left, and canister filter lily pipe on the right

 

[tim]

As long as filters powerful enough Henry, lily pipe should provide enough flow, play around with the placement until your happy with the flow pattern, nice hardscape btw

 

[Iain Sutherland]

I'm guessing it's a 60? If so lily front right should work, if you filter doesn't quite cut it then you can add a little push back left... I like the Eheim skim in my 60 when it was scaped otherwise a hydor nano etc...

 

[Henry]

It's a 16"x8"x8", not sure what that is in French. I think it works out around the 15 litre mark. It's going to have an Eheim 2213 plumbed in which may seem like overkill, but I've not had a single successful tank yet; always suffered diatoms

Thanks for the thumbs up on the hardscape. I've been obsessing over different layouts for weeks and it's always nice to have an outside critique.

So outlet front right, inlet back left, or have both on the same corner so the "circuit" is complete?

 

[James O]

That's a teeny tiny 40x20x20 16L ish

The 2213 will produce plenty of flow. To lower the 'clutter' in such a small tank I'd put in/outlet in the same place - going by the hardscape I'd go back right