should flow be decreased at night time?

I don't, but I've considered altering my wave scripts to increase the changes of pumps being turned off during lights out, but began wondering if the real reef has less flow at night or not...

On the other hand, even if it does, the amount of flow even the craziest SPS BB tank has is still nothing in comparison to the real reef, so not sure if it'd be a good idea to intentionally decrease the already miniscal amount of flow we've already got...

(In other words - Good question... Tagging along... :wink: )
 
well, most corals polyp at night to feed, so I would think that decreasing the flow could only be detrimental (relatively speaking of course). I would think that night would be when they would need as much flow as possible, but of course that's just my logic.
 
My understanding is that tidal seas are much calmer at night and that natural reefs do see a decrease in current during this time.

I have my tank set up so that when my daylights are off I also trigger a maxi jet 1200 to shut off. This reduces my flow from an approx. 1355 gph to 1060 gph during "non-daylight" lighting in my 72 gallon tank.

I'm really not sure if there is any benefit to this. My tank seems to do just fine and all my corals continue to grow and spread as expected. It seems to help my clownfish find a nice restful sleeping spot though, as he always crashes out in corner under the shut off powerhead while he spends the rest of the day on the other side of the tank.
 
Most reefs do see decreased flow at night. And wavemaking machines that I have used such as the Red Sea wavemaker and the Tunze system I now have both have things built in that slow down the flow at night or I should say after the lights go out.
 
So I'll add a few things.

Wave action is for sure calmer on the reefs at night. If you get a chance to dive at night you should try it. It's much smoother!

So the question is should we calm our tanks down at night. I say no and here is my reasoning. Note that this is for an SPS dominated high wave action environment.

1) The water movement we get is still no where near the ocean so there really is no worries with it being to much

2) Corals feed more at night. The more water pass the more food you pass theoretically. You don't want it to be so turbulent they can't grab food but see above. I honestly think the reason corals feed at night is because that is when the highest densities of zoplankton are in the water column. That combined withthe fact that polyp nippers (butterflies, etc.) are asleep at night so it's safer to be out!

3) More waste is produced at night. If you measure your skimmate production it is most likely higher at night. Photosynthesis shuts down and waste is produced at a faster rate so I don't want to slow my flow down and not export it.

My Tunze (Stream and Waveboxes) have photocels to sense the darkness and calm down but I don't use them!
 
My tunzes are set on night mode. I even have the moonlight feature enabled. It takes the corals thru the phases of the moon. Does it affect the corals, who knows. But my two 6200s and the wavebox do go into night mode and the reef is much calmer.
 
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