Are skimmers counter-productive once corals are introduced?

[casey012293]

So I’ve been thinking a little about this with my establishing a feeding regimen for corals.

It makes sense to start a tank of with a skimmer while you have fish and while building maturity, but once you get to that point, wouldn’t the space be better utilized to make the refugium larger? In the early stages you want to reduce nutrients to let bacteria build up to be able to handle nutrients, so it’s beneficial to pull excess fish poop out. Once you add corals, the fish poop feeds the corals so when you are pulling the poop out you are just making more work for yourself having to feed the corals separately, right?

At this later point, aren’t you just making more work for yourself by increasing the food requirements of the system if you’re having to supplement all these powder and paste coral foods which also end up being pulled out by the skimmer instead of focusing more of your limited sump space on pulling out the particles which have already broken down beyond the point of food (nitrates and phosphates) by utilizing more macro algae? It seems additionally beneficial to allow these smaller particles to continue to flow to feed the smaller polyps which cannot catch the coral foods.

 

[blaxsun]

The short answer is no.

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

There is more than just fish poop in the tank. There is rotting food, dead and rotting lifeforms (copepods, shrimps, worms, other small planktons...), dead and rotting types of algae, coral puke and shedding, toxins from other life forms.....

Dont forget the skimmer is also a great source of oxygen for the tank.

There are too many benefits to having one, but I have trouble coming up with even 1 or 2 benefits to not having one.

 

[ApoIsland]

There is more than just fish poop in the tank. There is rotting food, dead and rotting lifeforms (copepods, shrimps, worms, other small planktons...), dead and rotting types of algae, coral puke and shedding, toxins from other life forms.....

Dont forget the skimmer is also a great source of oxygen for the tank.

There are too many benefits to having one, but I have trouble coming up with even 1 or 2 benefits to not having one.

I took my skimmer offline 8 years ago and don't regret it for a second. No more wasted time cleaning, or turning it on/off when I put food in that makes it go nuts. Corals never need any supplemental feeding. Just light and water changes.

Opportunity cost means there are other benefits as well. I could only imagine how many more lbs of real from the ocean live rock I could have gotten if I didn't spend $500 on a dang skimmer. To me its the single biggest waste of money for my tank.

Would be a fun experiment to try and analyze the benefit of $500 worth of ocean live rock vs the benefit of a $500 skimmer.

 

[Spare time]

In do not run a skimmer for the fact that they sterilize the water column of filter feeding and particulate food that corals and other filter feeders primarily consume

 

[Tamberav]

You can be successful running a skimmer or not running one. Their are many successful tanks either way.

So what is your tank telling you?

 

[ZoWhat]

We need someone to come up with the terminological word describing a Reefer that sits around and comes up with an idea they think will revolutionarily change the Reefing industry

I've done it.

It seems like we all try to come up with an idea that the millions of Reefers of the past just didn't think of....or never tried

Like we are trying to reinvent the wheel over and over again

I've never seen this stream-of-thought-process....like we see in this hobby. It's amazing


.

 

[glency]

I run mine for 7 hours a night.

 

[atoll]

So I’ve been thinking a little about this with my establishing a feeding regimen for corals.

It makes sense to start a tank of with a skimmer while you have fish and while building maturity, but once you get to that point, wouldn’t the space be better utilized to make the refugium larger? In the early stages you want to reduce nutrients to let bacteria build up to be able to handle nutrients, so it’s beneficial to pull excess fish poop out. Once you add corals, the fish poop feeds the corals so when you are pulling the poop out you are just making more work for yourself having to feed the corals separately, right?

At this later point, aren’t you just making more work for yourself by increasing the food requirements of the system if you’re having to supplement all these powder and paste coral foods which also end up being pulled out by the skimmer instead of focusing more of your limited sump space on pulling out the particles which have already broken down beyond the point of food (nitrates and phosphates) by utilizing more macro algae? It seems additionally beneficial to allow these smaller particles to continue to flow to feed the smaller polyps which cannot catch the coral foods.

What about filter wool, socks and roller mats removing g coral foods?

I don't use any prefiltration and 2 days ago turned off my skimmer to see what affect it may have. My nuitrents are very low No3 1ppm PO4 0.02ppm.
I reduced the photo period on my ATS some weeks ago that raised my NO3 from 0 to 1ppm but I want it at 5 to 10ppm. I currently have cyno on the sand.

 

[atoll]

There are too many benefits to having one, but I have trouble coming up with even 1 or 2 benefits to not having one.

Food for corals. Possible increase in PH as a skimmer can add CO2, reduced running costs. Reduced cost in not buying one in the first place, less noise. There maybe more.

Don't get me wrong I have a good skimmer but 2 days ago I turned it off to increase nuitrents above my current 1ppm nitrate. I have increased feeding to get it to 1ppm from 0. The reason I have cyno on my sand. Some with skimmers are adding nitrate to their tanks but I would rather not go down that route.