Larry,
I am complete agreement that you can overskim. I have a 125 with one of
Ron's skimmers also. I believe I have overskimmed my tank for a year. I
was getting no coral growth,no coraline growth. Everything looked stagnant.
I spoke to Ron many times about the skimmer pulling water out and it always
has stated that is how it is supposed to run. But I started to look at many
other tank setups in my area. And every single person that has a skimmer
was pulling out a very thick gunk with no water. Ron's skimmer would pull
almost a 1/4gallon of brown water per day. So I finally decided to slow it
way down. And I have started to see a big difference after a few weeks.
The skimmer is not filling up with water, but rather a brown gunk is slowly
building at the bottom of the collection cup at the top of the skimmer.
After almost one week since I last cleaned it out, I have about 1/4" of
brown gunk. This is comparable to how other skimmers run.
Ron will not agree with this method, but I believe his pulling of more water
out with the skimmer is tied into his configuration of his tanks. For
example, he has many fish, feeds alot, and does almost daily water changes.
So his bioload is very high. He also adds additives such as iodine and
Vital Gold. I do not add any additives. So in his tank, the additives may
replace with his skimmer pulls out, where in my tank, the elements are not
replaced until I do a water change. Anyways, this is my opinion and I am
starting to feel I am on the right track.
Joe
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Larry J. Geguzis
Sent: Sunday, September 23, 2001 11:54 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Overskimming?
Hi,
Anyone want to wade in (no pun) on the topic of whether or not a
reef tank can be "overskimmed"? I have a 125 gal reef tank with over 300
lbs of live rock, almost no sand, 20 gal sump, and one of Ron's Saltwater
Heaven protein skimmers. It recently started cranking out mostly water (and
too much of that), so I thought I needed to change the airstones. Changing
the stone didn't help, so until I could get to a LFS to get some advice, I
shut it down. Since I have it shut off, (less than a week), my critters and
corals seem *healthier*. Colors are brighter, anemone bigger than before,
and the soft corals are noticeably somehow looking better. Not something
that's easily described (especially by a novice like myself). All the
water quality tests pre and post are good. The question is: Am I cruising
for a crash by only running the skimmer occasionally? (after I get it
working, that is). When it WAS working it really did churn out some
incredibly vile stuff. I had been running it 24/7. So, if the advice is to
run it less than 24/7, how do I gauge how much to run it?
All opinions gratefully accepted.
Thanks,
Larry
"Never eat anything that you can't lift."
Miss Piggy
________________________________________
LEAVING THE LIST
================
To stop receiving messages you will need to send a message to
[EMAIL PROTECTED] with a command to remove you from the list.
The list manager controls who belongs to the list.
For example:
--------------------------------------------------------------
From: John Doe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: <not needed>
UNSUBSCRIBE
--------------------------------------------------------------
________________________________________
LEAVING THE LIST
================
To stop receiving messages you will need to send a message to
[EMAIL PROTECTED] with a command to remove you from the list. The list
manager controls who belongs to the list.
For example:
--------------------------------------------------------------
From: John Doe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: <not needed>
UNSUBSCRIBE
--------------------------------------------------------------
