Skimmy
SKIM FU
wow, did that happen to her?
it be kinda neat if mine would do that:shock:
jk
it be kinda neat if mine would do that:shock:
jk
No skimmer system
- Thread starter moortim
- Start date
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Krish
RF STAFF
...Shucks! I hope I never have an ex to have to experience that...
Reefdaddy1
Reef Geek Jedi
I think a great person to ask is Eric Borneman. He runs a Huge skimmerless and his results can be seen here.
http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-08/eb/index.php
His tank is skimmerless and Probably has done more legitamate scientific study on Aquariums then anyone. He feels alot of the issues with tank stability now leads to the inconsistent Salt that is used. ie water changes and start up. SO take a look at these, and tell me if a skimmer is all that. I have a 160 right now that is skimmerless for 5 years. No problems.
http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-08/eb/index.php
His tank is skimmerless and Probably has done more legitamate scientific study on Aquariums then anyone. He feels alot of the issues with tank stability now leads to the inconsistent Salt that is used. ie water changes and start up. SO take a look at these, and tell me if a skimmer is all that. I have a 160 right now that is skimmerless for 5 years. No problems.
Krish
RF STAFF
His tank looks really nice! I don't think the point here is that you can't run a skimmerless system. Obviously you can, but why wouldn't you (like Mike basically said) if it gives you something extra to fall back on should something else in your tank fail. Almost like a spare tire in a sense...You can drive perfectly fine without one but get a blow out then what?
Reefdaddy1
Reef Geek Jedi
I agree, However Iam actually doing a study currently for Coral magazine. It entails the result of a 2 year study showing the benefits of skimmerless systems and what they can provide. Now all my other tanks (6 of them) Have skimmers of some sort. But my eyes are opening on this subject. Really is truly necessary. Allot of folks swear by DSB with a plenum. GARF is a perfect example. But traping Nitrites is one thing disposing of them is another. When the Smithsonian had thier tank they used turf scrubbers as well, That system was massive and was around for quite a few years. But what people dont always know is alot the corals were replaced daily because of death or sickly appearance. Florida runs were daily for that tank, That is why the Smith dismatled it, Cost was a factor.
But the recent events of Borneman has shown with Proper care a Turf scrubber can work miracles and cure somethings that occur. like latteral line disease. every day I take readings, I am more and more sold on this system. I will post pics shortly. Color seems nicer and the Coral a growing like crazy.
But the recent events of Borneman has shown with Proper care a Turf scrubber can work miracles and cure somethings that occur. like latteral line disease. every day I take readings, I am more and more sold on this system. I will post pics shortly. Color seems nicer and the Coral a growing like crazy.
Krish
RF STAFF
Sounds great! I look forward to the photos
In my last conversation with Eric he had a large skimmer back on line and was using ozone and ferric oxide. I believe a crash was the reason for going back to them.
Goniopora is a specialized coral, I dont think we can draw a line between one enviroment required for this coral and people reef tanks can we??
Mike
-=dieseldave=-
Well-known member
I don’t think it matters, its all about balance. Making sure your bio load is matched to your nutrient export and your husbandry.
Running a heavy bio load (lots of fish or even corals that require constant meaty feeding) in a system that is too small or ill equipped to process and export all of the nutrients entering the system is going to lead to problems down the road. If that’s five weeks, or five months, or five years, when you hit the critical mass you’re going to have a hard time returning things to a balance, this is what happens when a tank crashes.
So do what you want, run however you see fit it, does not matter. Your input needs to match your output. You’ll see the results bad or good.
Good luck,
David
Running a heavy bio load (lots of fish or even corals that require constant meaty feeding) in a system that is too small or ill equipped to process and export all of the nutrients entering the system is going to lead to problems down the road. If that’s five weeks, or five months, or five years, when you hit the critical mass you’re going to have a hard time returning things to a balance, this is what happens when a tank crashes.
So do what you want, run however you see fit it, does not matter. Your input needs to match your output. You’ll see the results bad or good.
Good luck,
David
Last edited:
Reefdaddy1
Reef Geek Jedi
Mojo. We just had him on chat in Michigan reefers room, and stated that his tank was skimmerless . I can send you the PDF file if you would like to see it
Reefdaddy1
Reef Geek Jedi
Yeah , Because I asked what his system was directly as far Filtering, And stated skimmerless. I was shocked really, I figured he would Have Mongo skimmer and Bunch of High tech stuff, But he said Skimmerless I nearly fell out my chair.
TheBart
Member
Before I took the thing down to move, I ran a refugium and no skimmer. Towards the end, I had to use a charcoal bag in the sump occasionaly to clear a very slight yellow color, but everything was growing great. I am finishing building a new stand and top for the tank (45 gallon bow front) so I can enlarge the refugium (about 3 times larger), and this time I will use a skimmer. Although I may put it on a timer to just run it a day or so a week. Just not sure yet on the details.
jsmkmavity
Well-known member
if you can achieve o nitrates with chaeto and no skimmer, the plus side is you need 2 less pieces of equipment and dont have to pay for power and maintainance on the pump. the one big plus for a skimmer IMO is oxygen exchange. even the small prism skimmers can do this well and cost little in power and maintainance and can be set up to double as a media filter. lots of people start out with these skimmers and move up to larger ones quickly for many good reasons and practically give away the prism!
liveforphysics
Banned
Don W- Just to clear something up, I do not have 'some luck' with soft corals. I actaully have 8 species of SPS coral, all of which are thriving and holding exellent color.
Now, to the topic at hand.
I've been working hard to restrain myself from jumping in here. I wanted to really hear what other people would say before I said anything. Many of you know how I feel about skimmers.
I will just state a few things that I have encountered myself.
I have never seen tanks that couldn't grow any pest algaes, until I went to an algae filtration system.
When I skimmed, I was in a battle with algae, and had to actaully do maintence and things that I would simply never waste the time on again. I actaully thought that these things were part of having a reef tank.
Now that I do algae only, I can dump in massive amounts of food at one time, and I cant get the tank to algae bloom, or have dectable nutrients. While I skimmed, it was a much much more delicate tank. Over feeding would cause blooms, changes in bio-load caused blooms, a single big over feeding would cause dectable P and N for a couple days. Now, I dump in 80ppm NO3 water from my cichlid tanks as top off water. Within a couple hours, nutrient levels are zero'd out again, and no bloom occurs.
When I used a skimmer, I have typical detritus accumulate. It was very visible and I would siphon it out and stir it and mechanically filter it etc. Now that I use algae only, anyone is welcome to come over and inspect my tanks for visible detritus. I swear I do nothing to remove the detritus, its comsumed naturally by the carrying capicity of the fauna in the tank. Each time its cycled through an organism, it becomes a lower energy state, and a portion of it becomes disolved in a mannor which the cheato is able to absorb. What was still too high of energy, is reconsumed, processed, and released into a lower energy state. This is the law of the conservation of energy. Now, the biomass quickly aproaches something called a carrying capicity, at which point the birth and death rates are equal. It is impossible for the biomass to simply continue to grow. I reaches equilibrium with the amount of available food, it is impossible for the macrofauna biomass to grow out of control.
Now, these things above are purely my personal observations, not opinions. Would I ever go back to skimming? Hell no. Do I think a skimmer is a neat tool? Yes, definately, if I ever spilled soap into a tank, you can bet it would be the first tool I would be reaching for.
Some of you may know that one of the largest and most sucessful closed reefs/breeding/aquaculture facilitys is Inland Aquatics. They use no skimmers, just algae. They have truely fantastic results. The systems are increadibly stable.
If you stopped skimming your reef, and things look great, I think you have proven to yourself through inherency that the filtration method obviously works fine.
Many others have also found this to be true, but for some reason there is this massive bandwagon pushing everyone to belive that skimmers are essential pieces of equipment for reefs....
I saw this on a site called aquadirect.com Its at the top of the page if you click the protien skimmer link.
Protein Skimmers are one of the most important pieces of aquarium equipment. They are solely responsible for the elimination of organic material, which can quickly turn to algae if left unattended. A skimmer is highly recommended in fish-only marine aquariums and is a must in reef aquariums."
If definately gave me a good laugh when they state that the organic material will turn into algae if left unskimmed. I was thinking, yup, very true, very true. Then you harvest the algae, and your export circle is complete. And hey! you did it without stripping the water of all sorts of natural foods/plankton/etc!
But anyways, I gotta say that not ALL skimmers are bad IMO. A very slow flowing air stone driven setup can be a very functional and helpful part of reef.
I belive that this sort of a thing should only be done as either 1 or the other, not a combo. I belive the combo makes for unstable macro algaes that are liabilitys. I also belive that the lighting is absolutely totally KEY to makeing this work. There is a million differnt ways a company can make a bulb with a 6500k temp rateing, the ones that I tried caused my cheato to turn clear and die. Im sure it dumped a ton of nutrients back into the tank when that happened (long time back). I see this as similar to what would happen to your corals if you kept them from getting usable light, they would die and disolve back into the water. Cheato needs the right wavelegnths of light, its not a matter of intensity, I had a TON of 6500k light, and it just died. I switched to some super cheap homedepot self reflected compact florecent spiral bulbs rated at 2700k, and very cheap. After the swap, the cheato has been increadibly solid, firm, and the growth is just unbeliveable. I would love to stick a time lapse camera on it so you could watch how much it grows in just 1 day. In order for it to grow, it has to be takeing large portions of N and P with it (along with C and some O).
The top part of this post is my personal and factual observations. Then later I state some of my thoughts on the matter.
I dont want this to turn into a battle, so please dont try to challenge my personal observations, I see that as calling me a liar. If you have encountered observations to the contrary, by all means please post them.
-Luke
Now, to the topic at hand.
I've been working hard to restrain myself from jumping in here. I wanted to really hear what other people would say before I said anything. Many of you know how I feel about skimmers.
I will just state a few things that I have encountered myself.
I have never seen tanks that couldn't grow any pest algaes, until I went to an algae filtration system.
When I skimmed, I was in a battle with algae, and had to actaully do maintence and things that I would simply never waste the time on again. I actaully thought that these things were part of having a reef tank.
Now that I do algae only, I can dump in massive amounts of food at one time, and I cant get the tank to algae bloom, or have dectable nutrients. While I skimmed, it was a much much more delicate tank. Over feeding would cause blooms, changes in bio-load caused blooms, a single big over feeding would cause dectable P and N for a couple days. Now, I dump in 80ppm NO3 water from my cichlid tanks as top off water. Within a couple hours, nutrient levels are zero'd out again, and no bloom occurs.
When I used a skimmer, I have typical detritus accumulate. It was very visible and I would siphon it out and stir it and mechanically filter it etc. Now that I use algae only, anyone is welcome to come over and inspect my tanks for visible detritus. I swear I do nothing to remove the detritus, its comsumed naturally by the carrying capicity of the fauna in the tank. Each time its cycled through an organism, it becomes a lower energy state, and a portion of it becomes disolved in a mannor which the cheato is able to absorb. What was still too high of energy, is reconsumed, processed, and released into a lower energy state. This is the law of the conservation of energy. Now, the biomass quickly aproaches something called a carrying capicity, at which point the birth and death rates are equal. It is impossible for the biomass to simply continue to grow. I reaches equilibrium with the amount of available food, it is impossible for the macrofauna biomass to grow out of control.
Now, these things above are purely my personal observations, not opinions. Would I ever go back to skimming? Hell no. Do I think a skimmer is a neat tool? Yes, definately, if I ever spilled soap into a tank, you can bet it would be the first tool I would be reaching for.
Some of you may know that one of the largest and most sucessful closed reefs/breeding/aquaculture facilitys is Inland Aquatics. They use no skimmers, just algae. They have truely fantastic results. The systems are increadibly stable.
If you stopped skimming your reef, and things look great, I think you have proven to yourself through inherency that the filtration method obviously works fine.
Many others have also found this to be true, but for some reason there is this massive bandwagon pushing everyone to belive that skimmers are essential pieces of equipment for reefs....
I saw this on a site called aquadirect.com Its at the top of the page if you click the protien skimmer link.
Protein Skimmers are one of the most important pieces of aquarium equipment. They are solely responsible for the elimination of organic material, which can quickly turn to algae if left unattended. A skimmer is highly recommended in fish-only marine aquariums and is a must in reef aquariums."
If definately gave me a good laugh when they state that the organic material will turn into algae if left unskimmed. I was thinking, yup, very true, very true. Then you harvest the algae, and your export circle is complete. And hey! you did it without stripping the water of all sorts of natural foods/plankton/etc!
But anyways, I gotta say that not ALL skimmers are bad IMO. A very slow flowing air stone driven setup can be a very functional and helpful part of reef.
I belive that this sort of a thing should only be done as either 1 or the other, not a combo. I belive the combo makes for unstable macro algaes that are liabilitys. I also belive that the lighting is absolutely totally KEY to makeing this work. There is a million differnt ways a company can make a bulb with a 6500k temp rateing, the ones that I tried caused my cheato to turn clear and die. Im sure it dumped a ton of nutrients back into the tank when that happened (long time back). I see this as similar to what would happen to your corals if you kept them from getting usable light, they would die and disolve back into the water. Cheato needs the right wavelegnths of light, its not a matter of intensity, I had a TON of 6500k light, and it just died. I switched to some super cheap homedepot self reflected compact florecent spiral bulbs rated at 2700k, and very cheap. After the swap, the cheato has been increadibly solid, firm, and the growth is just unbeliveable. I would love to stick a time lapse camera on it so you could watch how much it grows in just 1 day. In order for it to grow, it has to be takeing large portions of N and P with it (along with C and some O).
The top part of this post is my personal and factual observations. Then later I state some of my thoughts on the matter.
I dont want this to turn into a battle, so please dont try to challenge my personal observations, I see that as calling me a liar. If you have encountered observations to the contrary, by all means please post them.
-Luke
liveforphysics
Banned
As long ago as you gave them to me And thank you very much, they are very beautiful. 2 species that I didnt get from you were in the tank for about 6months or so, the ones I got from you have only been in for ehh, 1-1.5months?
How can the carrying capacity of the tiny guys be over-ruled? They cant extract the same energy when the eat the dead ones, so unless I am totally missing something big(please help me if I am), they have to reach an equilbrium with available energy/space etc.
I agree that biomass in the larger organisms can continue to increase indefinately, but with things that have quick birth and death rates, dont these numbers stabilize as they approach CC, and swings become smaller and smaller until they roughly settle at a given level?
I've never had a single bio class before, so I can only play this by reasoning. If they dont have to follow CC limits, I really wana learn about how they avoid it.
And thank you very much, they are very beautiful. 2 species that I didnt get from you were in the tank for about 6months or so, the ones I got from you have only been in for ehh, 1-1.5months?How can the carrying capacity of the tiny guys be over-ruled? They cant extract the same energy when the eat the dead ones, so unless I am totally missing something big(please help me if I am), they have to reach an equilbrium with available energy/space etc.
I agree that biomass in the larger organisms can continue to increase indefinately, but with things that have quick birth and death rates, dont these numbers stabilize as they approach CC, and swings become smaller and smaller until they roughly settle at a given level?
I've never had a single bio class before, so I can only play this by reasoning. If they dont have to follow CC limits, I really wana learn about how they avoid it.
Reefdaddy1 I just looked up a conversaton we had back in august 2004and at that point he was still using a big skimmer and ozone. Now he does have a few tanks, but the main 300 was being run that way. so either he was referencing one of his small tanks or maybe he took that equipment off line recently
Luke
You start with a fresh Sand substraight that is newly seeded with bacteria. As food and detritus land on the bed the bacteria begin to bloom to the level of food available. Since bacteria cannot directly reduce (lets say eat) the food they must create and release enzymes, so they do and reduce an amount of the detritus and the balance moves on. In just this very first step you have increased biomass through the reproduction of bacteria (and other forms).Now with all those enzymes being created and biproduct you are going to create biofilms in which the bacteria create their own micro enviroment. These biofilms become a living organism in sort as they tend to be populated by all forms of bacteria and other forms of microscopic life trying to utilise it. As other forms of biproduct are left behind that are not N this whole process continues for iron, sulfides, nitrates and so on. From here the portion of the food/detritus that is unable to be broke down (bacteria flock, bacterial sheding, metals or whatever else is not reducable, end product) moves to the bottom through gravity action. that is top down.
Now then you go bottom up, where reduce oxygen and thus redue ph levels begin to melt your substraight. With this you get calcium and carbonate released (buffering) but you also get the release of P as all sand comes in the bag fully saturated (natural process in the wild) thus you are again releasing a food source and then you get bloom of bacteria once again or at least another form of constant feed.
Mike
Luke
About 3 weeks I believe, you really need to give things a bit more time before referencing them as a sucess story or at least quantify that in your posts.
You have to look to the whole system Luke , its kind of hard to explain, heres an example.
You start with a fresh Sand substraight that is newly seeded with bacteria. As food and detritus land on the bed the bacteria begin to bloom to the level of food available. Since bacteria cannot directly reduce (lets say eat) the food they must create and release enzymes, so they do and reduce an amount of the detritus and the balance moves on. In just this very first step you have increased biomass through the reproduction of bacteria (and other forms).Now with all those enzymes being created and biproduct you are going to create biofilms in which the bacteria create their own micro enviroment. These biofilms become a living organism in sort as they tend to be populated by all forms of bacteria and other forms of microscopic life trying to utilise it. As other forms of biproduct are left behind that are not N this whole process continues for iron, sulfides, nitrates and so on. From here the portion of the food/detritus that is unable to be broke down (bacteria flock, bacterial sheding, metals or whatever else is not reducable, end product) moves to the bottom through gravity action. that is top down.
Now then you go bottom up, where reduce oxygen and thus redue ph levels begin to melt your substraight. With this you get calcium and carbonate released (buffering) but you also get the release of P as all sand comes in the bag fully saturated (natural process in the wild) thus you are again releasing a food source and then you get bloom of bacteria once again or at least another form of constant feed.
yes but you are constanly adding food and other sources of N and P so the model continues to get bigger (more biomass). If you add one flake on day one and lets say it grow 10 bacteria, those ten bacteria will still be around tommorrow when you add another flake, thus creating ten more. After a couple of weeks you will get some die off but that in itself will create more bacteria down the line. Its not like the one flake will feed only ten bacteria and thus the population will stay static. Reduction (specially nitrate reduction) is a very slow process, a process that will not keep up with 99% of the reef tanks out thier. What ends up happening a a slow skew of the overall enviroment which leads to one form dominating over other (natural selection).
Yes but that just works in models. Enviroments change constantly and that puts limits on them. A natural sediment system will operate as I discribed above. As time goes by end product detritus, enzymes, biofilms and such will build as they dont get flushed out (like they do through wave action, tides, storms and so on) so that builds up from the bottom. As that all builds up it changes the zones from aerobic to anaerobic, thus changing the working enviroment for a varity of bacteria, and/or changes their method of respiration. So its virtually impossible to maintain that equalibrium for long periods of time. Basically what happens is that you process materials through bacterial actions as you build up items that dont get reduced, this continues until the enviromental changes skew the operating area for bacterial types, once that is reached the cycle continues but it changes location, as in its not so much just with in the sediment but moves to the water column. This is usally where folks begin to have algae problems in their main system.
Mike
DonW
R.I.P.
liveforphysics said:
Luke,
Just to clarify my comment. Earlier just this year you mentioned to someone the need for chaeto for a fuge that was just set up. I would not consider a few months or even a full year anything more than just "some luck".
Dont get me wrong. I applaud your efforts for trying somthing that goes against the grain. You of all people should know that natural science experiments may not be concidered a success by your peers for years.
Don
Reefdaddy I just talked to him and he said that he still runs a large skimmer on his main tank and that he loves the ozone their two. Maybe he was refering to one of his smaller tanks when he said they were skimmerless??
Mike
Mike
