nitrate issue, pump too small?

[jkburton1s]

well here i am in the fish room thinking of things that would help lower my nitrates. was 80 now <20 over a 3 week span. last june when i was going to the carribbean my pump went out and the people taking care of it got another. well i was looking today and its a mag 7, i had a hf26 before. so i started looking and the gph was almost half at my head height. so i have a spare hyper flow 32 im putting on my 180 in a bit. i hooked it up. you should have seen the nasty detritus coming off the rocks. first 15 minutes it looked as is someone dumped dirt in the tank. 45 minutes later now it is clear as can be. with my head height its flowing around 1300 gph. the other pump was 300 gph. that is a huge difference. so now im wondering if the hyperflow 32 is too much. thing is in the next few weeks im adding 2 40 breeders to the system as well and am figuring on using the hyper 32 for a pump for all of them. it will have about 900 at 9-10' head height. i will be doing a frag tank and a lps tank. so do you think this will be enough flow or do i need to go to a mag 24?:faces:

 

[kospaintball]

IMO it wasn't the pump that caused the nitrates. if the water was getting circulated then it was getting filtered if you have a macro in your sump that is growing. But by the way you said that you swapped and detritus flew everywhere i would say that your "Flow" issue is a display tank issue. maybe different / more power heads. if the DT isn't getting the flow to knock the crud off the rocks then its not making back to the sump to be used.

thats how i see it. DT flow and circulation flow should be considered independantly.

 

[jkburton1s]

for tank flow i have 2 mj1200s and 2 seio 1000s... my return was only about 200-300 ;now its 1300 and corals dont seem to know the difference. they just do what they do. im thinking maybe my sump needs redesigned.