What is your preferred placement of powerheads for ideal water movement?

[shark_bait]

It seems the standard is to just put one in each back corner and angle them both toward the middle front glass. I would assume there would be some dead spots in the back, possibly in the back corners.

How will enough water movement be generated to pick up food, feces from the sand bed? And what about behind the rock?

Has anyone put something in the lower back part to the tank, maybe a few inches off the sand bed as to not disturb the bed too much?

How is your tank set up? Just curious to see how I can improve my setup.

[tholleyh46]

My tank incorporated a spray bar, its a little different as its a Japanese set up (I've never seen a similar set up in the US). I have two iwaki pumps, one runs the sump and all the spray nozzles on the top corners of the tank. The smaller one is a closed loop that pulls water from the bottom of the overflow and pumps it back through a PVC pipe that runs low across the bottom, rear of the tank horizontally and has holes drilled along the top of the PVC pipe (appx to about 7/16") at about a 45 degree angle, that sprays water through your aquascaping. I'd imagine with a powerhead and a hose/spray bar from a canister filter you could do the same thing. The hose would give you some flexibility and you could aim the spraybar upwards, and through your rocks to get the same effect. Should be easy to do, easy to hide behind your aquascaping and it can't hurt that's for sure and the more flow over and around your live rock, the better the cycle.

JMO

[tholleyh46]

Here's a generic illustration:

[tholleyh46]

Well, I actually tested this theory and running a power head through tubing with bends actually creates backpressure on the flow output and may not be worth the effort. In theory it seems it does work but you would have a powerhead functioning at a greatly reduced flow to 'aim' the output along the spray bar. Given powerheads and their intrinsic ability to suddenly stop working this may also be something the manufacturer doesn't recommend. I just don't know if its worthwhile, although I am happy with my spraybar from a pump that handles a much greater capacity w/regard to output and the like.

Something to consider.