To skim or not to skim, that is the question?
- Thread starter wishmaster
- Start date
Boogiechillin
It's ok, I confuse my students too.
I went without for a little while...ultimately went back to using one. It's much easier to maintain water quality and suppress algae with a skimmer up and running.
Well if you take lessons from freshwater, you will see why skimming is a good idea. Is it essential? the answer is certainly not but it depends on your situation.
If you have access to lots of "suitable" sea water then a skimmer is not just unnecessary, but probably counter productive (because you remove protiens as well as some of the essential element specially in reef tanks which you have to constantly add manually). In this case all what you need to do is change water. A friend of a friend has a 250G plastic tank which he fills with sea water using a pump and plums it directly into the aquarium for constant water change over a couple of months.
For the majority who don't have the luxury of having sea water freely at thier disposal, changing the equivalent amount of water would be an expensive excercise and the money spent on a good skimmer is well worth it...
If you have access to lots of "suitable" sea water then a skimmer is not just unnecessary, but probably counter productive (because you remove protiens as well as some of the essential element specially in reef tanks which you have to constantly add manually). In this case all what you need to do is change water. A friend of a friend has a 250G plastic tank which he fills with sea water using a pump and plums it directly into the aquarium for constant water change over a couple of months.
For the majority who don't have the luxury of having sea water freely at thier disposal, changing the equivalent amount of water would be an expensive excercise and the money spent on a good skimmer is well worth it...
If you have a full blown reef tank, is it advisable to remove or at leased reduce the time your skimmer runs so that all nutrients are still available for your reef and not reduced do to skimming. I think that might be the longest run on sentence I've ever writtenLOL.
Right know I have a 75 gallon tank. It has no corals or anemones yet, but I have a feeling it's going to be a reef tank. The tank is 7 weeks old and it doesn't have a skimmer on it. I already have a couple of fish in it and it's doing pretty good. I'd say if you had good filtration, you could get away without using it. A skimmer is basically a lazy way out. You won't need 1 right away either. I'm going to get mine when my tank is 2 months old.
Interesting comment - a lazy way out of what....exactly?
I run a Euro-Reef skimmer on my reef tank 24/7 and perform weekly water changes. I empty the skimmer cup about once per week.