Dirty Skimmer raising nitrate and phosphate?

[Sticker shock]

I just wanted to get a few opinions here. I've been slowly bringing my reef back from the brink over the last few months. When I started my nitrates and phosphates were close to zero, but I also had a massive amount of algae. So after getting the tank back into shape I had to start dosing nitrates as they bottomed out, but phosphates have been pretty steady at between .06 and .04. Once my Nitrates passed 10 ppm I stopped dosing however I am still recording a slight increase each day. Also, today my phosphate has jumped to .09. I've been changing out skimmer socks probably twice a week.

So today I decided to clean the skimmer and it was filthy. I'm wondering if the gunk in the neck was slowly increasing the nitrate as the skimmer was no longer removing all the organics. Instead they collected in the neck to degraded in nutrients. I'll be testing daily for a bit to see if this stops the nitrate & phosphate increase now that the skimmer is clean again.

Any one else notice nitrate/phosphate increase with a dirty skimmer?

 

[therootcause]

I forget where I heard it over the weekend, but in one of the many reefing videos I watched, someone mentioned that the gunk in the neck of the skimmer reduces the efficiency of the skimmer by X%. It may have been Vic mentioning it while making a video on Peter's tank on the WWC channel from over the weekend. I will take a look around to see if I can find it.

The gunk itself on the neck is remaining on the neck and continuing to accumulate. This slime itself may not be the source of nutrient but may prevent the skimmer from working most effectively. Keep us posted.

 

[Sticker shock]

I forget where I heard it over the weekend, but in one of the many reefing videos I watched, someone mentioned that the gunk in the neck of the skimmer reduces the efficiency of the skimmer by X%. It may have been Vic mentioning it while making a video on Peter's tank on the WWC channel from over the weekend. I will take a look around to see if I can find it.

The gunk itself on the neck is remaining on the neck and continuing to accumulate. This slime itself may not be the source of nutrient but may prevent the skimmer from working most effectively. Keep us posted.

I read that it lowered efficiency, but I just found it odd that I went from having to dose nutrients to getting to the point where I need to start removing excess. The one addition is a tiny tomini tang, which I doubt had much to contribute in the way of nutrients, but it is possible as he eats a lot of the algae in the tank preventing it from absorbing nitrates