Advice on Skimmerless tank

[Clark]

I am thinking about turning a 75 that I have running as a FO into a skimmerless stand alone reef tank, no (or just a couple) fish, Anyone doing a successful skimmerless tank have any good advice to share?

 

[danmhippo]

Without skimmer as your nutrient export, you will have to resort to other means of nutrient export. You will HAVE to perform water changes at least once a month (I do it bi-monthly). You will have to have lush growth of caulerpa possibly 1/2 the volume of your main tank as your refugium. AND, you will have to have sugar fine DSB.

 

[ross76053]

Ditto Hippo's comments. Tried removing the skimmer on my 10-gal for a month.....the algae bloom was uncontrollable, and I'm using RO/DI water. Had to attach it again for algae control. Oh, and I was doing weekly 10% water changes while skimmerless.

My advice would be.... If you want to try skimmerless, don't take it away all at once (like I did). Skim a little lighter each day for about two weeks, decreasing skimming each day (assuming you have a skimmer that permits this).

Good Luck...

 

[jhaag]

I've been running a 90gal for almost a year now using a modified Eco-System type setup. I have a 30gal (12"x36") as a refugium under it. There is a 55w PC over a ton of caluerpa. That is the only filtration other then about 80lbs of live rock and a 4" DSB. I change about 10% of the water monthly. It is mostly softies and I have a yellow tang, 2 green chromis, 2 false perc's, a royal gramma, a firefish, a cardinal fish, and a mandrain goby. All of them have been in the tank for well over 9 months and I have had no algea problems whatsoever. You should be fine as long as you have a good method for nutrient export. In my case I rely on the algea and waterchanges. In others, they rely on the skimmer. On a side not though, I have been way happier with the health of this reef compared to the old 55gal with a Remora Pro I had on it. Now that I have seen the results first hand, I am a definate advocate of skimmerless. The only catch is that I have heard it is very difficult to convert a skimmer tank to skimmerless without the problems ross76053 ran into. On the otherhand, if you start the tank as skimmerless, you transition into it from the initial bio-load and it matures to handle the final load.

 

[Mac1]

Ditto the nutrient export idea.. I recently cleaned out my refugium for a club meeting... pruned a little too much. I've been cutting back on the feedings the last couple of weeks, and I'm still battling algae. Now that the refugium's getting full again, I'm noting the 'snot' starting to fade a tad. Guess I can resume my normal feeding schedule again.

- Mac

 

[ross76053]

Laffs....yup, it's amazing how good of a job macro is with absorbing nutrients. You don't realize it until you've cut back on your macro too much (been there).