SKIMMING ?????

[Rich-n-poor]

to skim or not to skim that is the question whether it be nobler in the reef to suffer the slings and arrows of protiens or rather to skim and thereby overcome them
shakespeare (well sort of)

oh yeah what kind of additives would you recommend for soft corals ?
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grand daddy purple

 

[danmhippo]

What a coincident, I just turned off my EV150 just to see if there is any noticeable difference/disadvantage. I know many out there are going skimmerless. I noticed that after feeding of phyto, the EV150 kept pumped out the green skimmate, even after 3-4 hours

.

My main concern is lack of oxygen when the skimmer is offline. I'll see what happens tomorrow.

 

[Wookaka]

ITS BAD!!!!
I went skimmerless for a while and I'm still trying to recover 8 months later.
My case is probably extreme since I had a well stocked tank and no skimmer for at least a month or 2.
I tried to start an algae sump to suck nutrients but went about it all wrong and it shows now.
I guess I could chalk it up as an experiment that didn't go acording to the hypothosis!!

 

[jmeader]

I just answered that question for someone recently. Here is what I told them. http://butchmeader.com/forums/topic.cgi?forum=1&topic=13

 

[jmeader]

Skimming will remove some of the planktonic life, in particular phytoplankton.

 

[hectina]

try going for the middle of the road. Use a skimmer that is well proven and easy to maintain, but underrated for your system.

 

[Mouse]

My plan to overcome this is to use a Phytoplankton reactor, AB Aqualine make them but you really could set one up yourself. All you need is a suitable light source and a starter culture. I suppose because they are photosynthetic the addition of Co2 may be beneficial to the reactor. Then you could cascade the Phytoplankton reactor into a Zooplankton reactor, and then in turn into a Brine shrimp hatchery. If the flow from the first container was sufficient then you could have all three reactors feeding each other and the Aquarium recieving a mixture of Phytoplankton, Zooplankton and brineshrimp. Im still not decided as to weather im going to make these reactors myself or if im going to buy them and convert them into a cascading feeding system. If you had a computer and a peristaltic pump then the system could be automated so that the skimmer is turned off when the food folw is in motion. Im absolutely possitive this can be achived with a litttle time and tweaking with regards to the ammount of Phyto, Zoo and brineshrip flow. With this combined with a large macro algal refugeum / pod factory i think it would be the closest thing to a completely closed ecosystem. The reason i would like to do it this way round rather than trying to cultivate the various organisms in the system is that i would have measureable controll of every addition and extraction of nutrients. Of course im still in the dream phase of construction but im happy to share my mental jibberings with you.

 

[Moti Mo]

I asked the same quetion a while back. Here's my thread.web page

 

[Mouse]

Further to my preveous post it appears that Monolith Marine Monsters are on the case too. They also have the same reactors imported from AB Aqualine and various cultures available. Check it out

 

[Rich-n-poor]

ok well let me be a little more specific then does skimming remove plantonic life necessary for filter feeders and soft corals imparticularly anenomes leathers finger leathers and shrooms ? while i only have a set of false percs in my tank i have a great diversity of clean up crew red hermits blue hermits left handed hermit sally lightfoot anenome crab emerald crab and 4 types of snails oh yeah two linka stars and a sand sifting star and cucumber
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Mercedes O305

 

[Rich-n-poor]

um mouse could you put that in terms that the techinically challanged could understand ? (read real good at building things but real bad at big long words )

i am considering adding either a refugium or sump tio my system could you plankton reactor be incorperated into this ?

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Honda S800

 

[Mouse]

Started a new thread on that one, check it out.