Streetcred
Active Member
LOL, a 100% water change once a month would be too easy.Im skimmerless on a 45G, nutrient import and export can be controlled with more than a skimmer
Fight! Fight! Fight! Wet Skimming vs Dry Skimming
- QUESTION OF THE DAY
- Thread starter revhtree
- Start date
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Streetcred
Active Member
I thought the question was 'wet or dry skim' ... stay with the program or this thread will, as with all of the other like polls, become just another s/fight for anything else but the question.what about no skimming ;Bookworm;Bookworm;Bookworm????
Mr. Fishy Fish
Active Member
No skimmer is listed in the voting section xD
Streetcred
Active Member
Then, my apologies.
Right now I am skimming really dry. I am having issues keeping enough nutrients to keep my chaeto growing. I usually preffer a little wetter since the skimmer neck and top stay cleaner, but I am trying to leave what I can for the chaeto and not bottom out.
NewCaliCaptives
Active Member
yeah it probably still would. I have a 10g cube and it for sure required an ATO as I work full time, one thing to keep in mind with salt is the evaporation raises salinity levels so in our little tiny tanks even a small amount of evap can raise salinity quite a bit! I would also say keep your salinity a little low (I run 1.024) for that same reason. Good luck on that 5! Just remember consistency is key, and consistency can be especially difficult on pico sized tanks! This 10 is much more finicky than the 40 I had lol
Creggers
Active Member
I guess I’m skimming on the dryer side here. Usually, it’s a little wetter/lighter colored than that. I pretty much found a setting that works and left it there. It kind of does its own thing after that.
Crazy that you got a photo of my sump like that LOL. All jokes aside this is exactly what my skimmer collection cup looks like. I'm currently overfeeding my tank to attempt to bring Nitrate/PO4 up so I'm skimming a bit on the drier side. I will probably end up going a bit wetter once I set up a float switch in the skimmer to prevent overflows.
It's in the fish room and I dont mess with it. It just does its thing.
Id say somewhere in the middle, i.e medium, lol.
Wet but very dark.
Wet but very dark.
kaceyo
Active Member
When I had the 50g tank I ran it dry. I had an Octo 150int and it always had a nice thick foam output. I have upgraded to a 100g tank and a Bubble Magus BM-100se Anniversary Edition since and I can't get it adjusted to produce the thick foam I used to get, so I wet skim and that work very well. Nice dark stinky stuff!
stanlalee
Active Member
I turn it on and set my water level flush where the collection cup neck meets the skimmer body and let it do what it wants to. From there if skim collects in the neck too fast (dry) I raise the water level. If my collection cup stays clean too long (wet) I lower it. If the foam column is in the collection cup neck I lower it so that the bubble column is at the top of the skimmer body and bubbles have to "work" up the collection cup neck into the cup. This usually puts me right in the middle so "other"
No skimmer here.
I prefer to skim on the drier side to minimize salinity shifts in my 40 breeder. Having said that, I still need to add ~200g of Tropic Marin Pro Reef every Saturday to make up for the lost salt. If I could skim drier, I would - but the IM Nuvo Skim Desktop is not the easiest to adjust for consistency.
I believe it should be in the middle. Too dry and the cone needs cleaned all the time or it becomes insufficient. Too wet and your cup fills up with no organics in it. Pistol Peet’s first pick looks ideal to me.
MnFish1
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dryer - but since no definition - who knows what wet means to mr vs someone elseWet Skimming vs Dry Skimming
Ok just kidding about the FIGHT part but let's for real discuss wet skimming versus dry skimming and why you like one over the other.
What's the difference?
Laymen terms: Dry skimming is when your protein skimmer produces an almost dry like foam that takes a lot longer for your collection cup to fill up. Wet skimming is very "wet" and produces a more liquid waste more often. Dry skimming waste is usually very dark in color while wet skimming is lighter and looks somewhat like tea. Don't drink it though!
@Randy Holmes-Farley terms: Foam draining is a critical stage for most skimmers. One problem with drainage is that some organics are washed away with the draining water. There is always an equilibrium between organics in solution, and those actually attached to the interface. As water continues to drain, some of the organics are lost. Further, as some bubbles pop and their organics are redistributed into the nearby water, the local concentration of organics in the water between the bubbles in the foam can rise to concentrations far higher than are present in the aquarium. For this reason, the most effective skimming, in terms of total organic removal, comes from removing somewhat wet foam, rather than waiting for this same wet foam to drain prior to removal. The primary difference between wet foam, and drained dry foam, is that additional water and some organics have drained away. A dry form is more efficient in terms of the amount of organic removed in relation to the water volume, and all skimmers and their potential adjustments strike some balance between removing more water and slightly more organics, or less water and slightly fewer organics. Perhaps a careful analysis of different types of skimming will, in the future, show this expected result experimentally.
So let's discuss it today!
1. Do you prefer dry skimming or wet skimming?
2. What differences in the two have you noticed when it comes to the exportation of waste from your reef tank?
image via @reeftivo
raise the skimmerI have an issue with my skimmer as it overflow. Just started my tank but the skimmer isn’t new. Took the cup of for now and hoping it will calm the f..k down soon! It’s been going like this for three days...it’s a bubble king mini 180.
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