Protein skimmer
- Thread starter Robin Alv
- Start date
cause fw doesnt have salt. protein skimmer works with salt.
i found this out when i filled my tank with ro water first and my skimmer wasnt producing any bubbles until i added salt lol yeah dumb me
i found this out when i filled my tank with ro water first and my skimmer wasnt producing any bubbles until i added salt lol yeah dumb me
LOL.. Heck, I never knew a protein skimmer didn't work on FW until just recently.. but I never tried one on a FW tank myself either. NYC is correct.. it requires saltwater to create the super fine bubbles.
The reason is that the salt increases the surface tension of water, allowing much finer bubbles to form. The proteins glom together on the surfaces of the tiny bubbles. With an airstone or a needlewheel pump, you can't get nearly as fine bubbles in fw, so the proteins in the water don't glom together as well. I've heard some people say you can get some skimmate, but I imagine it would have to be very wet and the skimmer would end up requiring more maintenance than its benefit would be worth. Save your time and money and do an extra water change each week instead.
Oh, my water is okay - I change every week. I was just curious - since it does a good job in saltwater I wondered why not in FW. Now I know - thanks all.