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melev

Skimmers are wonderful

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Saturday night, my son helped me pump over 200g of saltwater into the 400g tank. Pumping the water into an upright pitcher, it seemed unlikely the water would get cloudy. Yet a day later it was somewhat murky, very different from the 215g running adjacent. Seeing the reef in nice clean water, it seemed like a poor choice moving those corals into the bigger tank.

Using a Reef Octopus skimmer I have on hand, I placed it on an inverted bucket (one with no handle) inside the display tank and turned it on. The collection cup pulled out lime green skimmate.

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Over the past 24 hours, nearly 2-gallons of watery skimmate was extracted which resulted in nice clean water.

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It's actually rather remarkable that an acrylic gizmo can be injected with tiny air bubbles and all export organics (DOCs for short) out of the system. Tanks running protein skimmers run more cleanly, that's to be sure. Every aquarium I've run successfully had a protein skimmer on it. There are some garbage skimmers on the market but any decent one will do a good job, so do your homework prior to purchase.

I still need to test the water to measure all the parameters before I'll tie it into the living system.

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Comments

  1. snorkeler's Avatar
    I have to agree.... skimmers were one of the first things that impressed me in the marine aquarium hobby when I started, and they still amaze me. How simple and effective!! Whoever figured them out was/is a genius.
  2. snorkeler's Avatar
    A skimmer themed vacation tale: when my kid was 3 or 4 (3 years ago) he asked me what I was cleaning from the skimmer cup, and I replied "fish poo", which isn't too far from reality. He kept that and refers to skimmate as fish poo. Well, last week we were at a beach resort in Bahia (northeast of Brasil), and the resort's beach was calm, protected from the surf by a reef barrier some 200m away, with only low rythmic waves hitting the shore. Guess what was found at certain parts of the shore? Yes, natural skimmate. As we walked it the first day, when we got to a section with skimmate, my son immediately asked, 'hey dad, is this stuff fish poo'? Got to be proud of him, huh?!
  3. melev's Avatar
    Totally. Kids are way smarter than we give them credit for. My son isn't a big fan of my hobby, but he knows a lot more than most when it comes to how things work and what things are called.