Is it possible to go skimmer less in a large system?

[seattle989]

Im curious If it is possible to go skimmerless in a reef sps tank. Like the sea, it is not connect to any protein skimmer and is regulated by biological cycles and cleanup crews alike.

Is it possible to keep a 100 gallon sps tank skimmerless with a medium fish load If i provided a very large refugium ? Fuge size im thinking either equivalent to the 100 gallon tank or as big as can afford.


anyone seen this done? i've gone skimmerless with nanos plenty of times in tanks under 25. But never on such a large scale.

Plz share your knowledge and thanks in advance.

 

[tat2z_21]

I do believe that the ocean has a built in Skimmer. If you walk along the beach and see the scum that is brought to shore with the waves maybe that is the oceans Bubblemaster 30000. I have seen several tanks that survive without skimmers. I am not saying that they are a necessity but it would involve a lot more water changes and constant cleaning without a skimmer. I am no master of the arts here but I believe that when it comes to the reef tank a little skimming off the top is a good thing.

 

[jhampton_wsu]

twallace runs a 120 without a skimmer. I don't know the details but his tank looked great on the tank tour. Everything looked great sps, lps, softies, zoas he has a very mixed reef.

 

[Slag]

You might find this interesting :badgrin:
http://www.snopes.com/photos/natural/seafoam.asp

 

[seattle989]

You might find this interesting :badgrin:
http://www.snopes.com/photos/natural/seafoam.asp

LOL must smeelll good

 

[luke33]

Yea, those people had no clue they were playing in poo! Exacto, the waves crashing is better than any skimmer out there. Can you go skimmerless, sure you can. And you can be successful to. You just have to do more maintenence as in more water changes, more carbon changing and gfo isn't a bad idea either. So all the extra media you'll have to buy and salt will add up imo. But sure it can be done.

 

[300ZXNA]

I would actually argue that the foaming action on shorelines is insignificant relative to the volume of the ocean. Besides, the waste and foam that ends up on shore would only be washed back in by rain, a big breaker, etc before it was completely consumed by bacteria, etc.

I think the ocean has it's own biological mechanism where it takes care of this waste we extract via foam fractionation (dilution being on mechanism, I doubt that the real ocean is stocked to near the level of living tissue per gallon as our tanks are) and that in our closed systems we simply can't replicate it, thus we use artificial means such as a protein skimmer. My question is why would you want to go without one? In the grand scheme of a reef tank, they aren't that expensive, give a good safety net in case an organism dies/fouling and do seem to increase redox, etc. Eric Borneman states it pretty well when he says that he doesn't know any reefkeeper who would look at the skimmate in their PS and decide to dump it back in the tank. Basically, other than the expense or just to say you could do it, why not use a PS?

 

[luke33]

You don't think the dsb's in the beaches are enough bacteria to absorb all the foam : ) Its the largest dsb in the world.

And I agree with you on the skimmerless tank. I would never go without because of those reasons as well. A skimmer does quite a bit more than just pull out doc's. It keeps your ORP levels up as well.

 

[300ZXNA]

Even if you assume that the DSB's will absorb all the foam, I still don't think that there is near enough coastline/sand for it to significantly impact the DOC content in the ocean. Think about just how much water there is in the ocean.

There are plenty of examples of reefs without much in the way of beaches near it that don't show any ill effects. The Great barrier reef doesn't have much coastline near it. It would have very little of that natural skimming action. Or for example the Big Island of Hawaii where its geologically young enough that the coastline there isn't really sandy, but rather big rocks.

Anyway, I think that there is some other mechanism taking place that we can't readily recreate in our living rooms. So we compensate with a PS.

 

[charlesr1958]

The quick answer is yes, you can go skimmerless and I would encourage you to do so. But to do so, you do need set in place other reef habitats that not only deal with dissolved nutrients, but in their providing another habitat also produce a diverse food chain that a skimmer would reek havoc upon by removing the basis of the food chain (phytoplankton) and the multitudes of zooplankton that are much better suited as food for everything higher up the chain. Even a simple algae turf scrubber puts any aquarium that much closer to being "reef" other than simply a coral display aquarium. A large macroalgae dominated refugium would take the entire system even farther.
For more details, please see:

A Philippine Fringing Reef & The Reef Aquarium - Part One - Land meets Ocean

Part Two - The Macroalgae Reef flats, details a great deal more than "just" the macroalgae though.

While I do run skimmerless, I still have one standing by for those rare emergencies when things go wrong quickly such as having all your snails mass spawn or your daughter decides that Nemo looks hungry and pours 8 ounces of fish flakes into the tank. But for day to day running, if you ever put skimmate under a microscope, you would be as shocked as I was at how much food is being pulled out, everything from bacteria, phytoplankton, huge numbers of zooplankton and coral mucus.

Chuck

 

[travis_]

I have 200 gallons total with 2 refugiums and very little skimming. In fact I do not get much skimmate regardless. I will probably just disconnect it as I believe that a good refugium with a good DSB does all you need. I also perform very little mechanical filtration as I feel you end up filtering out a lot of your benificial life.

Im curious If it is possible to go skimmerless in a reef sps tank. Like the sea, it is not connect to any protein skimmer and is regulated by biological cycles and cleanup crews alike.

Is it possible to keep a 100 gallon sps tank skimmerless with a medium fish load If i provided a very large refugium ? Fuge size im thinking either equivalent to the 100 gallon tank or as big as can afford.


anyone seen this done? i've gone skimmerless with nanos plenty of times in tanks under 25. But never on such a large scale.

Plz share your knowledge and thanks in advance.

 

[seattle989]

WOWZA sorry i havent responded to this thread. I was just curious lol. Charlesr that was defintly a very awsome read THANK YOU. Everyone else i thank you for your contributions as well. For those who asked me why not use/ have a protien skimmer: i do have a skimmer a NW octo-200. But its been off for about a month cuz the pump crapped out on me. Im not experiencing any problems water is good probally my deep sand bed and refugium is doing a great job. I totally agree that a protein skimmer is great and that i will use for just a back up for now on seeing as people have been successful with out it.

i will be making adding another 75-100gal macro refugium to my current 100 gallon system +40 gall sump refugium, and 10 gallon refugium..and keep the octopus for emergencies.

thank you all this was definitely a good read.

 

[burning2nd]

i say yes it can be done.. but it can not be done with out much water changes.

simply enough there has to be some sort of export .

theoretically.
If you add no nutrents and theres no decay... then nothing has to be done. except for the bacteria to be maintained (thats tricky right there)

but if you had no fish and you where doseing any other then whats consumed.. i would say yes.. you could do that..

but it being a mixed reef has nothing to do with the fact of excess nutrients.

food,waste and excess doesing left overs are all what goes to the skimmer... algae's and water change bucket.

in a closed system like this... a skimmer is more of a buffer replacement for gods beach's or "bubblemaster 3billion"