Ever since I put the tank in my room, I've been late to work every morning cause the water and the 3 pumps are too noisey. (for me) When I sleep it's gotta be dead quiet. I got the light timer installed today and though of putting a timer on the pumps too, this would mean all skimming and filtering would stop before I go to bed. I usually don't try to sleep until at least 10:30 or 11pm but gets up @ about 4:30 or 5am to get ready for work. So maybe I get the pumps to turn off @ 10:30 and comes back on @ 5am. Will that be ok?
can I run my filters/skimmer for part time only?
- Thread starter dannieboiz
- Start date
I had the skimmer on my nano turn off for several hours every night to allow food, shrimp larvae and such to be consumed rather than skimmed. Water quality was fine, and it helped wash the salt creep from the venturi.
What do you mean by 'filter'? The skimmer is fine, but if your biological filtration is primarily in a power filter of some kind, turning it off will be a bad thing--the ammonia levels will rise, since the bacteria are in the filter. If you have ample live rock that is providing biological filtration, and use a power filter for water current, you should be fine, as long as it is not the only source of water movement for the tank.
Well I don't have any other power heads in the tank, the dual bak pak and the wet/dry is the only thing that's moving water around. I can put a small power head in the tank to keep water moving around once I get the rest of the live rocks. So I guess I should be ok if I turn everything else off but the one powerhead inside the tank to move water around with say 80lbs of live rocks in a 50gallon.
Yep, that should be fine. Also--what is the source of noise? Is it the pumps, or the water movement? Sometimes you can adjust it to minimize the splashing noises, and some pumps are quieter than others. I have most of my equipment inside the stand, and it really does make it quieter, as well.
I have a lifetech 4550 return pump inside the sump in the cabinet. It does reduce the noise somewhat. I also put some paddings underneath the sump to deaden the vibration but it's still audioable. The water flow is also noisey but not as annoying since I can adjust the flow. The 2 small pumps on the dual is probably the worst since it hangs onto the back of the tank and the air bubbles that's blowing out from it sure doesn't help.
If you have a wet/dry and turn off the pumps you strand a chance of you bacterial bed in your wet/dry dying. The skimmer shouldn't pose any problem in turning it off for several hours as long as it gets turned back on within a reasonable amount of time so that the water in it doesn't stagnate. I would try turning just the skimmer off to see if that helps, BakPaks are pretty loud IMO and the other noise can be pretty soothing (kinda like a gentle rain). As laready stated you would still have to have some kind of circulation if you turned off both the skimmer and return pumps. Good luck, Skip