Skimmerless and clueless ?

[wjwaz59]

My 75 is running with a fuge and no skimmer. I am six months into this hobby and am still finding my way.
Based on what I read here, my tank is progressing well. I still have minor bouts of diatom and cyano, but they are becoming less severe and less frequent. My fish and limited corals are doing well, and I have coraline growing like mad.
I use distilled water for make up and changes, and I hang filter bags with SeaChem Sea Gel in high flow in my fuge to take up PO4 and Organics. The Calupera in my fuge grows, and I do harvest, but not nearly in the "pound" quantities.
Here is my point, I run without a skimmer and I am concerned my tank is loading up on nasties and I won't know it until major problems. My major params have been great over the last three months (NH3, NO2 and NO3 all at zero) My only struggle has been keeping ALK and Ca levels up.
I am concerned my ride is going to get more bumpy as time goes on. Question is, over the long term, is it recommended to add a skimmer to my system.

 

[benj2112]

Do a search for the thread, "Skimmerless Experiment Weekly Update" by druluv and you will get some good info on boths sides of the coin.

 

[wjwaz59]

is what prompted my question. I read a lot of data in it, and a lot of emotion. I'm trying to sort out a bottom line. My concern is I seem to be on a good path, but I'm worried about longer term.

 

[wjwaz59]

Have to decide on my own. I think I'm going with the skimmer. The balance of the investment is too large to go cheap on something like this. And ultimately the beauty and health of the tank is what it is all about. My tank is the focal point of in my great room, no margin for error, if you catch my drift.

 

[brooklyn johnny]

I too am a proponent for them. You can run a successful tank without one, and I have (do a search for kitchen nano in the nano forum). However, you will not be able to keep as high a bioload and will possibly suffer the detriments of having a high amount of organics breaking down in your system.
Take a look at some local friend's skimmate and try and convince them to dump it back into their tank. When I dump mine from my Euroreefs (recommended), my wife avoids the bathroom for about an hour. There is no chance I'd leave that in my systems, which is what would happen without the skimmer.
You could do it successfully by using others means of export, but none are as effiecient as skimming. I love refugiums and use them on all of my tanks, but not as my major source of export.
Simply put, the vast majority of experienced reefers would highly recommend a protein skimmer as a vital piece of equipment.
You could walk to work and it will get you there, but why do it when you have a car?

 

[wjwaz59]

I guess I passed the exam.. Thanks for the advice. I just need to work out the geometry under my tank.

 

[wjwaz59]

The convincing argument was in the marathon "Skimmerless Experiment" thread was when I believe "KIP" talked about the wave action in the ocean creating foam on the beach.. been there seen it, will be diving Grand Cayman in two weeks to witness it again !

 

[druluv]

I don't think Kip was correct on the natural protein stripper assement. But I let it slide. There is no natural protein stripper in nature. There are no Nutrients surrounding reefs because these nutrients are absorbed very quickly. Nothing on the reef is wasted and everything is absorbed.
Tanks that do well with a protein stripper are very hard to maintain. They need excellent husbandry skills. You have to constantly shut down you stripper when you are dumping back all of the nutrients your stripper took out the water. One wrong move and your tank crashes.
Many reefers are starting to realize the bad effects protein strippers can have on their tank.
I'm sure even Kip agrees that
The downside of skimming is that you are removing a lot of fine materials, both good and bad, the most detrimental being removal of trace elements that readily adhere to the bubbles. Use-
ful bacteria and suspended plankton
are also removed. In addition,
It is tougher to maintain kip style tank then natural filter tank.
And I see why he preaches patience and waiting a thousand years before you put in a mushroom coral.
Put this in your pipe and smoke it:
AS we know, corals are carni-vores and they capture micro-organisms as food when the polyps are extended. The main purpose of these polyps is to capture food and, although lighting plays a big part in nutrition for many corals, we are beginning to realize we have been miscalculating the amount of nutrition corals take up from consuming the plankton material. When the supply of these micro-organisms is removed,
as in heavy skimming, you won’t have the food chain that goes with it. Systems that use a fuge method with a form of marco-algae is a much more natural system. At the beginning of the food chain there are phytoplankton that utilize the light that we provide. This then becomes food for the larger zooplankton, which in turn is food for larger animals like the copepods and amphipods and onwards up the chain. If this chain is broken – as when you use a skimmer - you are unlikely to have the complete chain but only parts of it. This has, of course, led to aquarists starting to introduce synthetic cultures of phytoplankton and zooplankton to correct this. This usually can upset the balance in your tank.

 

[wjwaz59]

Again I see why this is so much fun... Solid argument on the "con" side. Solid arguments on the "pro" side. Like many things, this is still an evolving hobby.
I'll have some time to think about this, some of it up close and personal to the real thing.

 

[capschamp]

do a search for the thread put up or shut up. check out that guys tank.

look how many skimmers he runs. that is all the evidence i needed to know that a skimmer was good enough for me. trace elements are successfully replaced by water changes.

 

[druluv]

Again I see why this is so much fun... Solid argument on the "con" side. Solid arguments on the "pro" side. Like many things, this is still an evolving hobby.

best advice all day. Research, then chose what is right for you.:happy:

 

[druluv]

capschamp which tank are you talking about.
See kip reefs are so nutrient poor that anything that dies gets used right away. Good example of this, is your beloved xenia coral; which I have too. There is way more water than land. Its like using a back-pak on a 800 gallon tank.

 

[capschamp]

steveweast tank. holy crap! its amazing!
edit: and so are nmreef and bang guy,, all which i believe use skimmers. not trying to start a flame war or say that you absolutley have to have a skimmer, but with examples like that....

 

[footbag]

Druluv... You say that protein skimmers "strip" all of the nutrients out of the water. Don't you mean that protein skimmers take some of the nutrients out of the water? To say that they strip the column of nutrients would be an overstatement.
If a skimmer took all of the nutrients out, then there would be no succesful reef tanks running skimmers. And there would be no hobbyists with a skimmer testing NO3. I belive that the reality is somewhere in between. Skimmers aren't a catch all solution to tank problems, but they also aren't a horrible detriment.
As a follow up question, does anyone have any studies on what is contained in skimmate? You would probably need to analyze it as plankton will likely show up as organics.

 

[druluv]

I didn't say you can't have a successful tank without a protein stripper.
steve's tank is a beautiful tank, but there is a fuge attached to it. Kip said he has thought about removing, but I feel his tank even in a small way has benefited from it.
When you choose to use a protein stripper, you have to do a lot of work on your tank because not really balanced. That is why you need years of experience to use this style of filtration. Hence Kip's many warnings to me who has only a year under my belt.
I feel that if my experiment is successful, I may be able to bring down the learning curve that even newbies can enjoy a pretty reef.
As it stands, I have no problem with softies and lps and my tank can thrive with these specimens as my only inhabitants. But, I want to raise the bar and introduce sps.

 

[druluv]

what does my tanks being nutrient poor.. and dying things get used right away mean... and when did you come over and take a water sample?
dude, I was not talking about your tank; I was talking about the ocean. Water surrounding reefs are nutrient poor, because of this coral are very effiecient at processing nutrients. This why we use protein strippers to make our water nutrient free.

 

[footbag]

Water surrounding reefs are nutrient poor
I think you mean nutrient balanced. There are also good nutrients, the ones protein skimmers strip, remember.

 

[druluv]

no footbag
Water surrounding reefs are nutrient poor, when something dies all of the nutrients are absorbed. When a arco branch falls to the reef floor and dies the surrounding coral and plants absorbs the nutrients being release from the dead arco branch.

 

[footbag]

I don't belive the nutrients are all absorbed, just diluted in a sea of water. There is so much live rock, sand and more importantly water that the detrimental nutrients that we battle in our home aquariums just aren't a factor. Remeber the ocean isn't a closed system, millions of gallons of water pass through a reef every second.

 

[cincyreefer]

I agree reefs are nutrient poor. Lagoons are nutrient rich.