Opinions on water movement?

[ericbullock]

Again, coming from a reef-keeping background where water movement was critical, I'm wondering what the consensus is with planted tanks. Most of what I read advocates little water movement, but I'm concerned about detritus building up. A lot of fish poop (:?) seems to gather in my star grass (the little Oto cats are pretty busy with algae cleanup!) and I was considering using the spray bar return that came with my Eheim to create some more current. At the moment I'm only using the return from my sump pump.

Opinions?

Cheers,
-eric-

[Aaron]

Movement inside the tank is good. What you don't want to have is a lot of surface turbulence because that causes CO2 to gas off.

[ericbullock]

OK...I think I'll experiment with using the supplied Eheim return (spray bar), in addition to the sump pump. Right now, the output from the Eheim is dumping into the sump, and the sump pump is returning the effluent to the tank via a hard-piped return. Surface movement is pretty minimal, and I'm running CO2 like a madman to keep my PH low.

Speaking of PH (and a little off-topic, sorry) I'm still battling with my PH and hardness. I've invested in a RO/DI system, so all of my top off water is now "hardness free". Still, my total alkalinity is pretty high (around 10 ?KH). If I knew then what I know now I never would have put in that bloody Seachem Onyx substrate, especially since we now have the ADA Aquasoil available. The Onyx really seems to be contributing to my hardness problem, or at least that is my working theory.

I'm already thinking about my next tank...got my eye on one of those little cube tanks! Especially after seeing Sean's nano-cube.

Cheers,
-eric-
Rockville, MD

[stevendoll]

I am using the eheim return spray bar. I have it about an inch and a half below the surface and direct it away from the surface towards the front glass. I would say there is minimal surface disruption and it seems to create a fair amount of water flow.

[RTRJR]

I am a nut on water movement, but perfectly willing to have most of it below the surface rather than breaking the surface. As I am not using pressurized CO2, that is not as big an item form me as for most folks (I use Excel in the brighter tanks).