How many reefers here.............

[goofyreefer]

I'm curious as to how many reefers here who have refugiums also run a skimmer as well VS. just the refugium. Is it counter productive to run both?????

Thanks, Tim

 

[Yellotang]

I run both and I don't think they are counter productive. A refugium is a place to grow algae and critters. doens't mean that it will do the job of the skimmer just does a differetn job.

 

[fishfarmer]

I run my skimmer before my refugium. I like having several methods of filtration, LR, LS, skimmer, and macroalgaes. I like having the redundancy in case the efficency of one is poor, like when my skimmer needs to be pulled and cleaned.

 

[monkeyboy]

I run 2 refugiums, a skimmer, and export large amounts of xenia. Skimmers will not be removing everything that macroalgae will be, and vice versa. There's plenty of overlap in compounds removed, but there will be some things that macroalgae is better at removing than the skimmer. Well, that's my take on it

 

[goofyreefer]

The reason I asked that was because it's been said that with a refugium you don't need a skimmer any more. I guess that could be valid but I was just wondering what others position was on this.

 

[danmhippo]

Well, depends. I have both skimmer and skimmerless tanks. With skimmerless tanks, you will have to be more religious in making regular water changes. There are compounds that neither refugium nor skimmer can remove. Other then regular WC, I don't know of sure ways to dilute /remove the trace toxicity accumulation.

 

[Henry1]

My 125G system is 2.5year now. My bioload is fairly high.
Used to run it skimmerless during the first 2 years and doing 25% monthly water change. I observe a consistent trend that towards the 4th week, fishes respiration rate increases, sometime to the point that make me change the water and run carbon without waiting for the week to end.

After adding the skimmer for the last six months, this trend disappeared.
The amount of gunk pulled out daily convinced me the refugium alone is inadequate.

I felt running both skimmer and refugium together produce more effective filtration - in my case, the bioload is quite high.
I believes if the bioload is light, skimmerless will be OK with proper maintenance.

My understanding is, skimmer removes proteins before it breaks down into ammonia>nitrite>nitrate.
However, it is not possible to remove all of the proteins, hence, the refugium come into play to remove the rest of the waste products.

Happy reefing

 

[Nelliereefster]

A few points to add to the pile.

I run a skimmer before my refugium as well. Without a skimmer, a lot of the "water-clarity" compounds are not removed, and your tank water is slowly turning into chunky soup. Unless you are intentionally trying to run a "dirty" system in order to ensure there is enouh nutrition suspended in the water coloumn -for certain corals, a skimmer is simply mandatory.

A skimmer is also a great way to increase (to saturation) dissolved O2.

A skimmer is also a great feedback tool, as it will indicate the status of water "clean-ness." Slow foam production usually means fairly clean water. Heavy foam indicates something is askew (dead animal, plant or something knocked off the N2 cycle's equilibrium.

 

[adamsaquatics]

My opinon is that a refugium is way overrated, for the size of our tanks they should be 20 times larger. I also feel natural sunlight is needed to actually grow the algae properly. I run 1000 watts in my tank and pc's in the refugium with minimal algae growth. Yet in my outdoor coral tank using the same water...algae grows like crazy...in fact it's a problem. I guess you could say my refugium is outdoors.

The skimmer removes 95% of the organics before they have a chance to breakdown into nitrates, prolonging the need for water changes a bit.

The refugium is a great place to grow critters, as there is no predators around. I have a dwarf lion fish that eats small shrimp sucked up by the return pump from the sump.