Water motion is one of the most important things in a reef tank. We know that we need to move water through our live rock and avoid dead zones, but did you know that water flow can actually change the genes that are expressed by your Acropora corals?
It's true - water flow causes changes in the expression of over 120 different genes in coral. Those affect all sorts of things, not least of which is the coral's ability to recover after heat stress related bleaching! That's right - a coral in a high flow tank is more resistant to stress than one in a low flow tank! Corals in higher flow can live through bleaching events that kill other corals - less than 20% of coral in the high flow location on the reef in Guam died, versus more than 80% in a low flow location on the same reef. Same water temperature, same chemistry - the only difference is water flow.
0:00 Going with the Flow
1:11 Why is water flow so important?
2:10 Converting units of flow into units of volume
3:17 Low or High Flow?
4:08 How water flow effects gene expression
6:06 Adding water pumps to reef tanks
Hopefully I'm right that we can convert a cm/s flow into a cubic centimeter per second and then just math it out based on the area of the edge of our tank. I'm sure it's not 100% accurate, our tanks are not pipes, and we don't have 100% of the flow going in the same direction - but maybe it's ballpark in the right place? Hopefully! If you have a better idea on how to do this conversion, please let me know.
It's interesting that the wild reefs have SO MUCH FLOW! I'd have to have 12 Vortech MP40 powerheads to come close to the high flow reef in the paper. Maybe we can't model such high flows in normal reef aquariums?
Going with the flow: How corals in high‐flow environments can beat the heat
James Fifer, Bastian Bentlage, Sarah Lemer, Atsushi G. Fujimura, Michael Sweet, Laurie J. Raymundo
doi.org/10.1111/mec.15869
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