Anyone run a skimmerless SPS tank

[fritz]

I was reading up on some of the European SPS tanks and it seems like a lot of them run insane refugiums and no skimmer. (Skimmer counter acts and or is redundant to their fuge) Anyone here try that? I can't imagine not running a skimmer....

 

[herman]

I have been running an oversized skimmer to my tank, but due to size constraints I had to pull it from my system. I did that last week. I confidently do so because I have run small sps tanks in the past skimmerless.

However I do not advise anyone doing so because it takes a crap load of dedication. Daily siphoning and weekly waterchanges are the minimum.

Refugiums etc do their part but they will take you only so far. Skimmer is still king of the system.

Nice meeting you by the way

 

[fritz]

Nice meeting you as well

"daily siphoning" wow that's definitely stepping up the husbandry a notch.

I always thought that going skimmerless was ok but the corals had to be acclimated to the conditions present in a skimmerless system. Like I could have a great reef of huge colorfull corals that were all spectacular and no skimmer. Now if I took a colony from a tank with a huge bubbleking and moved it to this skimmerless tank, drip acclimated it , slowly got it used to the lights etc, it most likely wouldn't fare well (at first anyway) as it had grown accustomed to the conditions with the Bubbleking.

Aren't your corals going to experience a bit of shock?

 

[marrone]

Speak with Albert as he was running a SPS tank without a skimmer for quite some time. He added a skimmer a while back.

 

[inline6]

frtiz,

I don't use a skimmer, although I have a mixed reef.

http://www.manhattanreefs.com/forum/tank-threads/7877-aga-26g-bow-log-inline6-3.html

 

[herman]

The corals were in an extremely nutrient deprived environment with the skimmer. I also have very few fish so feeding was never huge. Now that the skimmer is okk the corals darkened in color a couple of shades. One good thing I noticed is that the polyp extension just about doubled. Its a balancing act really. Given the choice I would definitely go with skimmer. Its just easier to keep the nutrients lower that way. Seeing how the corals are reacting I might consider even turning the skimmer off for a couple hours each night.

 

[reefman]

I was reading up on some of the European SPS tanks and it seems like a lot of them run insane refugiums and no skimmer. (Skimmer counter acts and or is redundant to their fuge) Anyone here try that? I can't imagine not running a skimmer....

As a matter of fact. I do. I wanted to try something new even though I knew some big skimmer people would want to check me in the nut house.:splitspin

 

[jhale]

i was using a reef devil for a year on my tank, which for all purposes was like not having a skimmer. I think I had decent growth and color with out it.

 

[fritz]

Wow all interesting stuff. :scratchch
Especially the polyp extension and darker colors that Herman described.

 

[jhale]

well fwiw, after my new skimmer was on the tank for a couple of weeks i saw better PE and growth. so figure that one out

I think it's all achieving a balance the coral is happy with. I would never not run a skimmer, unless the tank were small and i could export the nutrients via a water change.

 

[fritz]

well fwiw, after my new skimmer was on the tank for a couple of weeks i saw better PE and growth. so figure that one out

Ha!
Well to those of you that are (or were) skimmerless, did you run a DSB or a DSB in your fuge? What percentage of total water volume was your fuge? It seems to me that to make it work you would need almost a 50% total water volume fuge with a very DSB and tons of macro algae. The key to the system of course being one of those plastic scuba divers hooked up to an air pump in your main tank, just a thought....

 

[jhale]

i prefer the treasure chest with the lid that opens and closes.
I have one next to my clams, it makes them look bigger than they are, haha.

I have a BB tank, I handled the export with a 20-40 gallon change each month in the first 6 months, then i got lazy :tired:

 

[alrha]

Speak with Albert as he was running a SPS tank without a skimmer for quite some time. He added a skimmer a while back.

I had been skimmerless for about 2 years, now i am running the Tunze 9015.
I had DSB and my sump (40 gal) was basically one huge refugium with tons of LR and Macroalgae. I also ran phosguard and carbon. I kept a very light bio-load and fed even less. As such, i believe it is possible. i added a skimmer however to afford me to increase my bio-load.

 

[Sean]

My show tank at my shop is skimmerless. It's only been up since Dec.12th but it's never had a skimmer. SPS LPS zoanthis mushrooms everything is in this tank. everything is doing well.

It's a total of 500 gallons. Oh yeah I use tap water. Come down and see it for yourself

 

[fritz]

You're going to get Cyano just like me! hahaha (we just had a conversation about this, I came in to get Chemi-clean) Seriously though, how do you treat the tap water? What do you do about Phosphates?

 

[GQ22]

sean, is this the one by the door, or the one in the middle of the store?

 

[Sean]

The one by the door

the one in the middle has a huge ETS on it.

 

[fritz]

Oh! right right right, the one by the door has a huge fuge underneath it doesn't it? So 500 gallons total, what's the volume of the display?

That article I posted about the Montipora Digitata gorging themselves on zooplankton to recover from stress, damage, loss of energy stores got me thinking about the Equpean "natrural" (skimmerless) tanks. Our skimmers pull out any of the "good" stuff along with the bad.
Maybe I'll try out the natural style once my rocks stop leaching phosphates :headache::irked::banghead:

 

[Sean]

displays 350 gallons

If you noticed I have like 18 fish in the system and they're all on the small size

 

[jackson6745]

Most skimmerless tanks that I have seen in person or pics of do not impress me. In comparasion to the many awesome tanks running larger skimmers, why would you want to have a skimmerless SPS tank? I'm not saying it can't be done, it just doesn't make sense why you would want to be skimmerless in an SPS reef.