ZsWithTheFishes
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- Jan 21, 2018
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I was debating on whether to post this here or in the lounge considering that it is not directly related to my reef tanks, but the chemistry aspect is what I'm interested in.
I run skimmers on my marine/reef tanks, but for obvious reasons not on my freshwater tanks. I have tested skimmers on my brackish tanks, and I've noticed that I start getting skimmate with high-end brackish (1.015). I haven't experimented with this in any sort of controlled manner, so the results would be skewed by the fact that my low end brackish tanks vary in the amount of surfactants present. What I'm wondering is: what would be a scientific basis for assessing what salinity level would warrant the presence of a protein skimmer?
Getting my head around the chemistry of foam fractionation in the first place took some time. First of all it would stand to reason that saltwater would not foam at all: the presence of something affecting the charge of water's surface should destabilize the surface of potential bubbles rather than promote it, right? And if you simply put a small bubbler under RO water next to saltwater, that would seem to be supported. Less salt means more, longer-lasting (if relatively short-lived) bubbles. But as anyone who has seen seafoam and all of us reefers know, that is not the case in more turbulent conditions. That's what got me interested in colloidal science; things get too complicated and seemingly contradictory in the study of bubbles to come up with an exact answer to my question.
I did find this article, which was the most straightforward one so far in spite of having almost 40 references in the first paragraph of the introduction:
https://www.nature.com/articles/srep04266
It supports the fact that the velocity at which multiple air-water interfaces approach each other, and it addresses the contradictory nature of electrical charges that should not promote the longevity of these bubbles in the first place. It's a very interesting read, but it also confirmed to me that I should stick to electrical rather than chemical science.
Does anyone have any experience running skimmers on less-than-marine conditions? Without sufficient anecdotal evidence I'm going to be forced to run an experiment on this in an attempt to satiate my own curiosity on the subject. I'm running a tank from low-end brackish to fowlr (maybe even reef eventually) right now, so the time is right to begin collecting data.
I run skimmers on my marine/reef tanks, but for obvious reasons not on my freshwater tanks. I have tested skimmers on my brackish tanks, and I've noticed that I start getting skimmate with high-end brackish (1.015). I haven't experimented with this in any sort of controlled manner, so the results would be skewed by the fact that my low end brackish tanks vary in the amount of surfactants present. What I'm wondering is: what would be a scientific basis for assessing what salinity level would warrant the presence of a protein skimmer?
Getting my head around the chemistry of foam fractionation in the first place took some time. First of all it would stand to reason that saltwater would not foam at all: the presence of something affecting the charge of water's surface should destabilize the surface of potential bubbles rather than promote it, right? And if you simply put a small bubbler under RO water next to saltwater, that would seem to be supported. Less salt means more, longer-lasting (if relatively short-lived) bubbles. But as anyone who has seen seafoam and all of us reefers know, that is not the case in more turbulent conditions. That's what got me interested in colloidal science; things get too complicated and seemingly contradictory in the study of bubbles to come up with an exact answer to my question.
I did find this article, which was the most straightforward one so far in spite of having almost 40 references in the first paragraph of the introduction:
https://www.nature.com/articles/srep04266
It supports the fact that the velocity at which multiple air-water interfaces approach each other, and it addresses the contradictory nature of electrical charges that should not promote the longevity of these bubbles in the first place. It's a very interesting read, but it also confirmed to me that I should stick to electrical rather than chemical science.
Does anyone have any experience running skimmers on less-than-marine conditions? Without sufficient anecdotal evidence I'm going to be forced to run an experiment on this in an attempt to satiate my own curiosity on the subject. I'm running a tank from low-end brackish to fowlr (maybe even reef eventually) right now, so the time is right to begin collecting data.
