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crappy skimmer
- Thread starter mattstewart
- Start date
Use the sponge, and after talking to my LFS owner again today, it's really not a bad skimmer at all (and he DOESNT sell them, but only because the profit margin is not high enough for his location).
As he explains it to me, a skimmer will skim, if there is something to skim. A lot of people said their Seaclones wouldnt skim, but in reality, they were either in the break in period, or there really wasnt anything to skim in their tanks.
Mine skims like crazy sometimes and doesnt skim at all other times, and with this, the thought is that the skimmer has already skimmed out the gunk in the tank, and has nothing to skim again till I feed or enough waste is produced for it to skim again. So for me, it's doing its job.
Anyway, as to your question, YES, you should use the sponge, and the reason for this is because it will otherwise suck up what you feed into the bottom portion of the seaclone, and it wont come out. it will continue to swirl around and around, until you turn the air regulator all the way closed, then it will reintroduce all that uneaten food back into the tank. I do speak this from experience as this is what happened to me recently. I was running my seaclone 100 without the sponge for about a month, then I turned off the air regulator only to find a bunch of uneaten mysis shrimp and krill moving about in the tank.
While some people will tell you that the sponge is a nitrate factory, that is easily overcome by pulling the sponge out during your weekly water change and squeezing it out in the changed water in a bucket. I mean how much easier can it get? It's not like you have to really work to unattach the sponge and hose, so it's not hard to keep it cleaned out.
With mine running a sponge now AND a canister filter with a presponge, my nitrates are now 0 to 5.0, closer to 0 then 5.0, so that is definately more than acceptible for a FOWLR tank and probably pretty acceptible for a coral tank.
Definately run with the sponge, it will save you sucking up the uneaten food and reintroducing it at a later time.
I think I wrote up something about that here, or on one of the other forums I visit, i.e. nanoreef, or reefecentral or one of these reef forums.
Goodluck.
As he explains it to me, a skimmer will skim, if there is something to skim. A lot of people said their Seaclones wouldnt skim, but in reality, they were either in the break in period, or there really wasnt anything to skim in their tanks.
Mine skims like crazy sometimes and doesnt skim at all other times, and with this, the thought is that the skimmer has already skimmed out the gunk in the tank, and has nothing to skim again till I feed or enough waste is produced for it to skim again. So for me, it's doing its job.
Anyway, as to your question, YES, you should use the sponge, and the reason for this is because it will otherwise suck up what you feed into the bottom portion of the seaclone, and it wont come out. it will continue to swirl around and around, until you turn the air regulator all the way closed, then it will reintroduce all that uneaten food back into the tank. I do speak this from experience as this is what happened to me recently. I was running my seaclone 100 without the sponge for about a month, then I turned off the air regulator only to find a bunch of uneaten mysis shrimp and krill moving about in the tank.
While some people will tell you that the sponge is a nitrate factory, that is easily overcome by pulling the sponge out during your weekly water change and squeezing it out in the changed water in a bucket. I mean how much easier can it get? It's not like you have to really work to unattach the sponge and hose, so it's not hard to keep it cleaned out.
With mine running a sponge now AND a canister filter with a presponge, my nitrates are now 0 to 5.0, closer to 0 then 5.0, so that is definately more than acceptible for a FOWLR tank and probably pretty acceptible for a coral tank.
Definately run with the sponge, it will save you sucking up the uneaten food and reintroducing it at a later time.
I think I wrote up something about that here, or on one of the other forums I visit, i.e. nanoreef, or reefecentral or one of these reef forums.
Goodluck.
I have Berlin Classic on a 75 FOWLR tank. My inhabitants are a Yellow Tang, a Gobi, a bristle star, and 3 shrimp. When I first setup my tank using tap water my PS was overflowing with foam and stuff. Now that I have been doing routine water changes with RO/DI water my PS hasn't been producing any foam. Is that okay ????
I don't have a big bio load in the tank and when I inspect the top of the PS there is some "gunk" on the insides of the top tube so it seems that it is skimming out some stuff. But, I do have some blue/green microalgae in the tank that is taking a while to go away. My Ammonia, NO2, NO3, and Phosophate levels are 0 so I can't figure it out..
any ideas?
Thanks in advance.
I don't have a big bio load in the tank and when I inspect the top of the PS there is some "gunk" on the insides of the top tube so it seems that it is skimming out some stuff. But, I do have some blue/green microalgae in the tank that is taking a while to go away. My Ammonia, NO2, NO3, and Phosophate levels are 0 so I can't figure it out..
any ideas?
Thanks in advance.
Just because test kits don't register parameters like phosphate doesn't mean that aren't there. Phosphate gets bound to multiple ions and can be readily displace. It also will adsorb onto LR, etc. so that there can be a ready supply for a good while after decreasing phosphate input into the tank.
In other words, it takes a while for algae to go away in a well cycled, mature tank. How old is your tank? If less that 6-8 months at the minimum, then everything is still maturing (some say less than a year and I tend to lean that way myself).
Be patient. Continuing using RO/DI. Don't overfeed. Clean sponges, etc. routinely. Good water circ/flow. In time, you'll notice algae going bye-bye!!
John
In other words, it takes a while for algae to go away in a well cycled, mature tank. How old is your tank? If less that 6-8 months at the minimum, then everything is still maturing (some say less than a year and I tend to lean that way myself).
Be patient. Continuing using RO/DI. Don't overfeed. Clean sponges, etc. routinely. Good water circ/flow. In time, you'll notice algae going bye-bye!!
John
ufans":o1xu0dvg said:I don't have a big bio load in the tank and when I inspect the top of the PS there is some "gunk" on the insides of the top tube so it seems that it is skimming out some stuff.
Thats the way my seaclone started out, it would only skim stuff into the tube for the longest time, maybe 3 weeks. Now I regularly get the dark brown smelly liquid inside of the cup. I just cleaned mine out yesterday, and now I've got a good quarter inch or more of dark brown liquid in the cup and the tube is dark brown again. I think it just takes time, atleast it did for mine.
well, everything in my tank is doing real well, nitrate, nitrite, phosphate are zero. I was using tap water and had a gross algae breakout, but after switching to only ro/di water, and a couple of water changes and goodbye algae. as far as my skimmer, maybe there isn't much to skim. I have that thing running at full blast all of the time and I only get about a quater of the cup full after about two weeks. I guess my bioload is pretty small though. who knows.
word.
word.
well, everything in my tank is doing real well, nitrate, nitrite, phosphate are zero. I was using tap water and had a gross algae breakout, but after switching to only ro/di water, and a couple of water changes and goodbye algae. as far as my skimmer, maybe there isn't much to skim. I have that thing running at full blast all of the time and I only get about a quater of the cup full after about two weeks. I guess my bioload is pretty small though. who knows.
word.
word.
When you say fullblast, do you mean that you have the air regulator open all the way, or close to all the way? If so, then close it all the way and only open it 1 and a half turns, then leave it like that for a few days.
When theres a lot of load on the tank and a lot of waste, these things skim like crazy, at my new LFS that opened a couple months ago (the place where I did buy the seaclone), they have them on 30 gallon tanks and I've seen them skim, they have to empty the cups of dark brown waste every day, and he says sometimes twice a day. But as you can imagine their tanks are pretty heavily stocked.
When theres a lot of load on the tank and a lot of waste, these things skim like crazy, at my new LFS that opened a couple months ago (the place where I did buy the seaclone), they have them on 30 gallon tanks and I've seen them skim, they have to empty the cups of dark brown waste every day, and he says sometimes twice a day. But as you can imagine their tanks are pretty heavily stocked.
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