Coral reefer
Past President
All you had to do was close the valve a tiny bit more.
Skimmer Blues
- Thread starter Jeff Rehling
- Start date
Toxic to what?Fish, LPS, SPS, inverts? It depends. Algae growth isn't solely determinant on nitrates by any means. If you're sitting at 30 now and having algae issues it's just as likely to be an issue with lighting, lighting schedule, intensity, etc and other factors as well. What kind of algae is it?
As noted my main tank runs with 30 nitrates and I have almost no algae issues (in that tank.) Front glass will always have to be cleaned. That can be bacteria as well.
As noted my main tank runs with 30 nitrates and I have almost no algae issues (in that tank.) Front glass will always have to be cleaned. That can be bacteria as well.
For the record, my other tank was running at 3-5 nitrates and developed a rampant hair algae and cyano outbreak that almost crashed the entire tank.
best way to crash a tank? Pay no attention to it. Second best way? Pay too much attention to it (and the wrong things.)
grizfyrfyter
Guest
My tank stays around 5ppm nitrates and I have to clean my glass a couple times a week.
Filter socks are great if changed/cleaned before the trapped organics decompose. Leaving them in for more than 2 3 days pretty much defeats the purpose. An alternative is to use media cups (or silverware cups for restaurants) that fit into your sock holder and use poly-fil ($20 for a box that lasts months). I do this, I just have to pull out the old stuff and put in fresh stuff every couple days.
You can run without filter socks and let your Skimmer and fuge deal with the detritus but you will have to suck out the detritus as it builds up in the sump over time.
Filter socks are great if changed/cleaned before the trapped organics decompose. Leaving them in for more than 2 3 days pretty much defeats the purpose. An alternative is to use media cups (or silverware cups for restaurants) that fit into your sock holder and use poly-fil ($20 for a box that lasts months). I do this, I just have to pull out the old stuff and put in fresh stuff every couple days.
You can run without filter socks and let your Skimmer and fuge deal with the detritus but you will have to suck out the detritus as it builds up in the sump over time.
Flagg37
Guest
The only time I used socks was when I was doing maintenance and stirred up a lot of particulates in the water. I’d let them stay in until the next day then took them out. I also ended up taking my skimmer out and let my fuge handle all my nutrient export. I would empty the cup every week or two but it wasn’t anywhere near being full so I tried leaving it off for a couple days to see how things went and there wasn’t any change. No3 and po4 stayed about the same and there wasn’t a noticeable drop in ph so I took it out. Mind you I had a pretty large fuge and was harvesting a bucket of chaeto about every two weeks.
grizfyrfyter
Guest
I've seen a lot of great tanks that ran with little to no skimming.
OnTheReef
Guest
So when you cleaned the skimmer, did you use an abrasive pad? The surfaces inside the skimmer body and throat need to be slick, so that the bubbles covered in organics can “crawl” up the inside of the skimmer. If you scratched up the surface, that crawling action may be halted. Also, might there be any soap or oil residue on the surfaces you cleaned? This would dramatically alter the surface tension of the bubbles, halting the foam concentration process.
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OnTheReef
Guest
Yeah, Randy-Holmes Farley had a great article on this awhile back, I’ll see if I can dig it up. Here are the highlights I remember:
- Tanks that tolerate high nutrient loads are usually very mature, 2-3 years old. Most hobbyists don’t get to run their tanks this long before they have to move or suffer a catastrophe requiring a reset.
- Most reef aquarists that “don’t skim” gradually reduced their skimming, but still have a skimmer plumbed in and run it when it’s warranted: minor die-off, chemical treatment requiring additional aeration, pH imbalance, etc. Some only skim after feeding, others only a few hours at night, etc. These details are often not mentioned in a quick post or those that cite “no-skim” tanks aren’t aware of them, but are crucial when considering the actual behavior of successful aquarists as an example.
- Most successful aquarists are doing significant nutrient export that may not get mentioned in a conversation focused on skimming: growing a five gallon bucket of chaeto every month in a refugium 1/4 to 1/2 the size of the DT, massive water changes, using many pounds of bio-media or rubble in a sump, etc. You can see some of this revealed in Jeff’s original FOLR to Reef thread, where I asked how some reefers here can add whole cubes of frozen food to their tanks and not have an algae explosion.
The takeaway for you Jeff is that a balanced, sustainable approach for nutrient export that gets to a steady level of nutrients is better than getting ahead of yourself and over-skimming or doing massive water changes. Slow down man, let the chaeto grow, do smaller water changes, more frequently if needed. The problem you risk now is over-correcting. For example, if you get to undetectable nitrates with huge waterchanges, your chaeto is going to starve and maybe die, making your nitrate problem suddenly worse! Easy does it, make small adjustments from here.
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